Sleepless in PT School (YOLO edition)

If I added up all the sleep I've gotten in the last three weeks, it would probably be the equivalent to R-Pats in Twilight. Only I'm not a vampire. And my body is not meant to function without REM cycles (Plus I don't sparkle in the sunlight.)

I don't mess around with my sleep. My freshman roommate swears I was in bed by 11 every night (I promise you I pushed it to 12 sometimes!) and I even earned the nickname "Granny" one summer because I was always the first one to leave evening festivities.

But the lack of sleep I've experienced over the last few weeks was ALL WORTH IT.

First off, I went white water rafting on the New River in West Virginia.

Yeah, cue the John Denver and picture me singing at the top of my lungs because that definitely happened.

After the safety preparation talk the guides gave, I was positive every single one of us was going to die on the trip, but nobody even ever fell out of the raft... It was still X-treme though. I didn't snag pics on the river, sry.

^^ This is the bridge that goes over the New River Gorge. Unreal!

I also learned how to rock climb in WV. I know, I know, I'm X-treme!

^^ Yeah, West Virginia is pretty

My plan for the following weekend was to study for my upcoming midterms, but that quickly lost its appeal when I was extended an offer to go wakeboarding Saturday morning. So obviously I did that because it's going to be getting cold soon and YOLO.

Saturday night and Sunday, however, were spent buried in the books.

Then Monday-Friday of the following week were filled with cramming for the exams that were headed my way the following week. I stayed at Erwin (the PT building) until midnight or later almost every night that week AND woke up around 6 to study more before classes. 

^^ Late nights with Old Bones and the Expo markers

Then Friday rolled around. CAMPOUT.

Let me give you non-Dukies the rundown on Campout.

Duke basketball is loco crazy right? Like, they COULD fill a huge arena if they had one, but they don't. Cameron Indoor fits 9,314 basketball-loving souls to be exact. So naturally, these tickets are hard to come by. This is where Campout fits in.

Campout is a 36 hour event for Duke grad students that allows them a chance to win a season ticket to the basketball games. This year, over 2200 students registered for the chance to win about 700 season tickets. Basically you come and pitch a tent or stay in a U-Haul in a parking lot near Cameron Indoor for 36 hours. They have about 30 random check-ins throughout the weekend and you cannot miss more than one or you are automatically disqualified from the lottery.

And since we are grad students and everyone is over 21, this event includes a whoooole lot of alcohol. Basically, a lot of people have already pre-gamed when they arrive at Campout, and many of them don't sober up at all during the whole 36 hours... Which can actually be pretty dangerous if you think about the mad rush of people trying to make it to the check-ins every five minutes.

Most people commit to doing Campout in a group, and then at least a few people from the group will be chosen to get the season tickets and you just divide them up between everyone who made it through Campout. This keeps things interesting because you want the most chances to win tickets amongst your group, so people be sure to get everyone from their group to the check ins each time. This means that even those members of your group who are so drunk they can't even walk will be carried to the check in lines.

AND, if YOU are the special one who gets chosen, then you get first pick of the games you want to attend. Since Duke and UNC have the biggest rivalry in college basketball, everyone picks that game first.

So anyway, Campout was wild. They did have a little bit of mercy and didn't really call any checks from 3am-7am each night, but the rest of the time was free game. They could call a check in and then call another one five minutes later after you had finally gotten back to your tent and gotten comfortable. It's a cruel world here at Duke when it comes to basketball.

However, I am happy to say that yours truly was chosen in the lottery for season tickets! So YES, I will be attending the Duke vs. UNC basketball game happening in February. Tickets for the general public are already selling for over $1000. It's going to be insane!

 

^^ the only picture proof I have that I was at Campout

The week of midterms was just insane and I don't even want to think about it (or even think about writing about it) and you don't want to hear about it. The important thing is that I passed all of them. Go me!

Thursday right after exams, I headed to Orlando for the weekend to work at the Spark Run. 

The Spark Run was soooo much fun, but entailed a LOT more manual labor than I could have foreseen. My feeble frame is not made for heavy lifting, but I tried my best.

Friday was about a 14 hour work day and Saturday (event day) I worked from 10am until Sunday at 6am. Yeah, that twenty hour shift wasn't too miserable until about 4am, when we had to pick up three miles of cones that each weighed like a bajillion pounds (again, feeble farm here).

So yeah, that part was rough. But I was in good company (holla at my boi Jeff Dunn for getting me the gig)

^^ Me and Jeff with Tall Guy Jeff and some of our awesome volunteers

^^ Also I got to share a pizza with Kaskade. nbd.

After the final clean up was done we literally had just enough time to head to our hotel, take a shower and pack up our stuff, before we had to drive to the airport to make our flights. Talk about insanity.

When I got home around noon on Sunday, I made a beeline for my bed and passed out until 7pm. Oops. Seven hour naps are typical, right? The best part is that I thought I wouldn't be able to sleep that night, but I had no problem falling asleep at 11 and sleeping straight through the night.

Thanks to this helpful and depressing article from WebMD, I've discovered the terrible toll the lack of sleep over the past few weeks has probably taken on my body:

• My cognitive processes have been interrupted and I now won't be able to learn efficiently.
• I'm probably going to get diabetes and/or die of a heart attack.
• Due to a decreased sex drive, I probs won't be able to reproduce.
• I will look 20 years older than I actually am (probably another reason why I won't be able to reproduce.)
• I will be depressed and forgetful (I'm already forgetful, so that's just wonderful).
• I'm going to gain weight (as if having Bojangles right down the street from my apartment wasn't enough)
• I have an increased risk of death.
• And to top it all off, I am now probably completely unable to make sound judgement calls about anything, especially sleep! 

So this vicious cycle will continue until I die from a heart attack at age 30, wearing no pants because I forgot to put them on that day, looking like I'm 50, weighing twice as much as I do now, unmarried with no offspring because not only do I look 20 years older than I am and weigh twice as much as I should, I have no sex drive and probably haven't slept in the past 7 years!

This is what grad school does to you. Undergrad friends, make better career choices while you still can. Your life is counting on it!

And lastly THIS. I can't stop listening.