My Mind is Playing Tricks...

I've never considered myself an insomniac. I love sleep, no, I crave sleep. At least usually. But since Exams are looming ever closer, I have unintentionally done something monumentally stupid. I've somehow reversed my sleeping schedule. One night I couldn't sleep and stayed awake the entire night and then went to bed at 9 am. Woke up at 5 pm and since then I can't get back to a regular sleep schedule. It's as though my body has decided it's fed-up with this European crap schedule, went on strike and my internal clock is back to West Coast US time.

However I have to say, nighttime is much quieter and more conducive to studying. For about a week I had a neighbor blast his music and bass vibrated my room from two doors down. Impressive, right? At least I know he won't do that at 3 am.

Now it's my goal today to stay awake till 7 or 8 pm. If I can make it to 8, I know I'll be fine for exams. The only thing is, when I get that tired, staying awake longer than 24 hours, my mind starts to play tricks on me and I get really shaky. For example, I tried this last night, and I could have sworn my next door neighbor had a cat in his room. Usually all I hear is random Arabic, sometimes a group of them and his bed squeaks every time he sits on it or turns over in his sleep. I'm hoping it was the squeaking I heard, and not an actual cat.

I'm going to go grocery shopping at 3 pm. Hopefully the cold snap in Nottingham will wake me up. And I need food for exam week. I don't want to have to worry about food shopping between exams.

I've emailed a few of my friends in my classes and from what I hear I'm ahead of the curve on the studying and papers. Especially the papers, since I'm done with one, halfway through another and should be done by the end of next week. After that I have ten days to complete two critique papers that are simply giving the pros and cons of two studies' scientific method. My friends tell me they haven't even started to write the papers. That gives them TEN DAYS to write FOUR papers. I do not envy them. Although one, I did in one sitting. It was a personal development paper, so there was no wrong answer, since it's just my account of where I want to be and how to get there in 5, 15, 25 years. Easy.

I say good luck to them, and wish good luck to me. I may just need it. For my exams and so I don't lose my mind from lack of sleep.