One of the most fear-inducing phrases in the collegiate English language is “midterm season.”
It brings to mind images of getting kicked out of libraries at closing time and of syllabi you haven’t glanced at since week one. One might think that by my seventh season of this absurdity, I would have learned that actually doing my readings on time makes this period easier. Alas, I’m a slow learner. Instead, this semester I entered a flurry of post-Fall Break midterms knowing it was a war I was bound to lose.
But these things must be done. I bravely peered at my syllabi. I acknowledged my midnight-on-a-Saturday departure from Clemons with a wittily-captioned Snapchat to friends and acquaintances. And thus, after a week of seemingly unending reading, palpable panic flowing through my veins and less-than-minimal sleep, I completed my final midterm. Relief washed over me. I had made it.
I then took an inventory of my physical condition. Most of my ailments made sense — my eyes hurt from wearing contacts for too long, my back was cramped from an accidental nap on the couch. But what was difficult to explain was why and how the pervading low-grade soreness throughout my body had manifested itself most prominently in my aching teeth.
I brought this up with a friend who had watched me evolve through nine different stages of midterms-induced delirium.
“My teeth hurt,” I said. “Is that a normal side effect of staying awake?”
Not willing to risk shaking my imbalance any further, she replied, “Sure. Let’s say yes.”
In hindsight, I’m curious as to why this philosophy-and-politics-studying friend even entertained my nonsensical questions. Philosophical query: if one accepts staying awake as the normal human condition, can it even have side effects?
That’s a more appropriately existential question for said friend. I’ll bring it up with her later.
In the interim, I’ve started thinking — what have been the products of my sleepless week? What conditions and experiences have been induced by my general state of perpetual wakeful consciousness that I wouldn’t have encountered if I had succumbed to every catnap craving — a desire I face approximately every five-and-a-half minutes?
I guess the most recent side effect would be increased inclination toward water polo.
Coming home after a long day and still recovering from midterm madness, I was staying up just a bit longer than intended when a friend came out of nowhere and implored me to join her intramural inner tube water polo team to avoid forfeit. Sleepily caught off guard, I suddenly had two options: bedtime, or rolling in and out of an inflated tire in a racing suit I hadn’t worn in months while attempting to throw a volleyball in the general direction of a teammate and instead inadvertently blocking an opponent’s shot with my slightly-larger-than-average forehead.
In staying awake, I found myself embracing the role of a human bull’s-eye.
Then, of course, another side effect of consciousness is the ability to appreciate the hard work — or perhaps the hypersensitivity to the sound — of the construction workers outside my window. When changing states from asleep to awake, I am always much more aware of the ever-evolving human proclivity toward higher decibel levels.
One might say the causal mechanism is reversed, but I digress.
But in all seriousness, I run into other side effects all the time. I’ve ended up dancing downtown at Fridays after Five after foregoing an end-of-the-week siesta, getting midnight Cook-Out milkshakes after I’d prolonged preparing for bed and discussing life plans, goals and concerns with friends until the early hours of the morning, instead of heading home for slumber. Thus, sleep is a wonderful and frequently undervalued thing, but there are undeniably wonderful perks to the company and experiences inherent to staying awake and being present.
It’s a tried and true message: later in life, we won’t remember the sleep we got and the naps we took, but we will remember the eventful evenings and happy afternoons we spent in discussion or on adventures.
Toothaches aside, I’ve never enjoyed side effects more.
Caroline’s column runs biweekly Thursdays. She can be reached at c.trezza@cavalierdaily.com.
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