I think I have been constantly complaining of how exhausted I am and how little sleep I get at Cornell regularly. I’ve had conversations with Liz about how hard it is to get relaxed enough to sleep at the end of the day and then having to wake up within a couple of short hours. I have tried chamomile tea, warm sleeping masks, sleepy time tea, and changing exercise routines to regulate my sleep cycle. I ended up using a sleep cycle app and the warm masks to help and, in the end, I got myself off of caffeine. It has been an interesting journey and this table talk showed me that, of the sample of maybe 10 students, none of us were well rested.

Interestingly, each of us had different strategies to deal with the lack of sleep and all of us expressed guilt because of sleeping. In the article that Liz made us read, this professor at Cornell at Doha proposed that college students should get about 9 hours and 15 minutes of sleep. Personally, between classes, schoolwork, work, research and just functioning as an adult, there’s no chance I can sleep for 9 hours without missing some type of work. It is just very difficult to be well rested and get work done. It’s not healthy but I think that’s how I’m functioning.