What’s best: test, rest or jest?
Maybe a mixture of all three.
Why am I on the internet when I have a test tomorrow and should be sleeping—or studying? This question ranks high up there with the big ones, such as, “should I get smooth peanut butter, or chunky?” You can’t go wrong with the big ones, seriously. Mess it up and you have to face the consequences, such as waiting for the next trip to the grocery store.
So, how to answer this question. It doesn’t make any sense to lose sleep. Sleeping is an important part of the memory consolidation process. Meaning, the stuff you study is encoded in your long term memory when you sleep. Which means that pulling an all-nighter is not a good idea. Not a problem for me, because I rarely study at night. When I am in final exam mode, I study during the day and chill out at night. That’s just me. Others usually sleep all day and study all night when it comes to finals. For me, nighttime is party time and sleepy time. Not study time. Sometimes the party time cuts chunks out of the sleepy time, because I am…well…doing things.
Doing what? When an academic deadline looms, I tend to spend time on things related to studies, rather than actual studying. For instance, I always make a study plan for finals, where I first write down all the dates until the day of the first exam, then I go backwards, numbering the days until I have a countdown all the way from today to the last day. It helps to keep things dramatic—thirty days until finals! Twenty days until finals! Ten days until—you get the point. All the way down to “I can’t believe tomorrow’s the first final! What have I been doing with my life?” It’s not always easy to remember exactly what I’ve been up to. You see, there are just so many things. For instance, there is information about time management on the internet, which I can use to make my study plan. There is a whole bunch of stuff on how to do stuff— “life hacks”, pro tips, success stories and the secret ingredient that is guaranteed to set everything right. You can spend so much time reading about doing things rather than actually doing them.
Then there are, of course, all the feeds—there are so many more feeds than just your good old Facebook news feed. Updated on every last finger wiggle of your classmates’ cousins? Dive into the blogosphere. Tired of reading? Surf through the photo sharing ocean of the world wide web. Can’t find anything? Fire up Stumbleupon. Feel rebellious? Use a proxy to access Youtube. I have only touched the tip of the iceberg, but even that is enough to melt the night away.
Seriously, it is an interesting thing to consider, where time goes when you are supposed to be doing something important. Just five minutes until I start studying, you think, and then, five hours and a lot of Facebook notifications later, you head to bed scratching your head and resolving to study like mad tomorrow. Ah, tomorrow. The mysterious land where there exists a smarter, slimmer, sleeker version of you, who lives up to your full potential and never lets an opportunity go by. Today, however, you are stuck with the real, limited and undisciplined version, and there are no new updates available. Pay only sweat, blood and tears on a daily basis to upgrade to Pro Self. Did I mention it was elf sweat, unicorn blood and fairy tears? Just kidding, you really can upgrade. Eventually. Right now…wait, I just got repinned on Pinterest. I have to Tweet about it. Better check Instagram while I’m at it. Now, where’s my Tumblr…
Oops. I almost forgot. I was answering a question! Hmm. I think…I think I found the answer. The best is not test, rest, or jest, but conquest. There is no why, there is just the straightforward punching of the “power” button, and the banishment of all electronic devices to another room—tomorrow.
