Wednesday, November 21, to Thursday, Thanksgiving, November 22, 2007:
This week's sleep schedule thus far has been weird. Sunday night was a near all-nighter due to a Spanish project and not realizing until 4 or 5 AM that I was better off napping first and then working on my Spanish project rather than trying to finish it right then (as I was too tired to work and just got distracted playing games). Monday, I came home on the 4:15 bus and slept until 9ish, when I woke up briefly before falling asleep again until 3 AM Tuesday (that's 10+ hours of sleep), from which point I stayed awake. I took a half hour nap between 5 and 6 PM Tuesday and then pulled a legitimate all nighter reading Siddhartha and writing journal entries for it. I did finish the book (in school), and I must say I enjoyed it more than Demian. I disagree with some of the philosophies, though. Upon coming home on Wednesday, I promptly went to bed and slept uninterrupted (to the best of my memory, I don't recall being awoken) until 4 AM, at which time I got up to use the bathroom before going back to sleep until 5 AM (uh... like 14 hours of sleep). I ate some food while accounting, which I did until 8 or 9 AM. Then I fell asleep on the family room sofa until 10 or 11 AM.
I've really started to greatly appreciate sleep. Days when I'm sleep deprived are frankly sub-par. The body jives on well-rested days are completely different than those on sleep-deprived days. Feeling fresh and energized is such a wonderful feeling. I love pausing for a moment and self-evaluating my energy and getting the response "peak levels, ready to accomplish, fresh and alert." There's no dull pain in the eyes or brain that wants to be assuaged by sleep. On well-rested days, focus is not constantly interrupted by a "Oh my gosh, I'm so tired, I want to sleep so badly" every few seconds. There's no slumped in a chair, every muscle relaxed, looking blankly ahead, dizzy, shifting in and out of consciousness, vegetative state. One is alert and intense, and one's body emanates active energy. I'm definitely trying to sleep more (such as sleep sooner when my homework is fulfilled instead of studying math/accounting half the night). But awful low-sleep days remain due to all-nighters caused by procrastination, so in order to be well-rested every day, I have to tackle procrastination, which is a slightly bigger task :-). Also, another problem I think is a personal affinity for night? I seem to accomplish much more in the peace of the night hours. Is it just because there is nobody awake to distract me? Is darkness surrounding you less distracting than a bright room? I think it's mainly the serenity and the freedom to roam the house and to do whatever one pleases without interruption that draws me to night. I'll have to give some of that up in order to sleep more.
Oh, anyways, Happy Belated Thanksgiving! And now onto my dream.
I was at FBLA regionals, taking my Accounting I (what I'm competing in on January 8, 2008) exam. The competition arrived earlier than I expected, and I had not finished studying an accounting book I planned to work entirely through in preparation.
So I was disappointed in myself and promised to prepare better for states...if I got there.
The test began. I spent a long time on the first problem. And I kept telling myself, "Rush, rush, no one ever finishes the regional exams - you gotta rush through them." I knew I was paced too slow, so I willed myself to proceed faster, but I didn't...my eyes were locked on each question until I had answered it. I couldn't skip a question.
I got to a question for which there was a three-dimensional tray of food embedded in my test packet. Of course due to the nature of dreams, this seemed perfectly normal. The food tray, which was headed by a question, covered the right half of the page, and another question covered the left half:
(By the way, I've been operating this computer's (my laptop) mouse with my left hand since the beginning of the school year, so my manual dexterity is reduced (in case you thought the above artwork was worse than usual).) Anyways, the food tray question was, "Level the spaghetti across the entire tray." I interpreted this to mean I had to spread the food (there were other foods besides spaghetti) evenly across the tray so that the entire tray was covered and the food was piled at a constant depth throughout the tray.
I decided to solve this problem by grasping the top and bottom of my test packet - which had magically turned into tray handles - and sliding my test back and forth, thinking it would level out the spaghetti due to natural processes.
And a massive glob of poorly mashed potatoes appeared in my rice. I took out a fork (don't ask me where that came from) and started stabbing the potato (it didn't deserve to be called mashed potatoes) to try and break it into little chunks. After very poorly dicing the potato, I shook the tray some more to spread the potato chunks evenly. I decided I had done my best and moved on. (Of course when I turned the page, none of the food spilled out.)
I flipped through the remaining pages to see what I had left. I wasn't nearly done. This was an accounting test, but it was nothing like what I had studied. There were problems that involved newspaper articles. In fact, we had a separate newspaper that contained a section in the middle specifically written for the test. This section had several short articles that appeared in the same order as corresponding questions that asked us about the articles. One question asked us from which high school was the student who won such-and-such national award, and when I was searching the article for the answer, a video started playing in my mind. The student's HS's principal appeared, and he was being interviewed, and he said, "I'm not allowed to say who the student is, but I will tell you he's taking a science course." And for some reason, that was the clue I needed to figure out the answer.
I checked my stopwatch periodically during the exam. At 20 and some odd minutes, it randomly reset! Then, I thought, I only have 35 minutes then to finish the rest of the test. I looked once when it read 9 minutes and another time when it read 30 minutes, and the latter time I looked, I thought, "Oh crap, when is the test gonna end?" I was about to ask the proctor how much time was left when he said, "Hand in your tests."
I looked around expecting to hear people complaining about how impossible that test was and how we didn't have enough time, but nobody did.
Afterward, I exited into the cafeteria, and on my way back to the WPHS table, I saw and greeted Stephanie Ng, a friend from GSET. When I got back to our table, I sat down across from Alice Kim, who asked me who I spoke to. I told her it was Steph, a friend from GSET. She responded, "Oh, isn't she cute." Before I could respond, Michelle Yu, another GSETtler, who sat to Alice's right, said, "Please, I've seen more [sic] roasting people than her."
That's all I remember before waking up, though I might have dreamt more. Every time dreams involve future events, I always take them as a warning to take action, usually to prevent the dream from being realized. So from this dream, I take it I need to prep hard for my Accounting I exam. I've started already: I'm taking Accounting period 7, I borrowed a few extra accounting books, I've been self-studying ahead in the school textbook, and today, I completed three chapters' worth of problems. My goal is to qualify for nationals again, except this time I plan to go (I couldn't last year due to GSET.). Also, the dream had some Thanksgiving references: mashed potatoes, food in general, seeing friends (subconscious appreciation for having them?), and a cafeteria (suggests food - what Thanksgiving has a lot of). It turned out that my Thanksgiving did involve potatoes and rice, diced and white, respectively. No turkey though. Hope everyone enjoyed his or hers. Thanks for being there.