Why there's no time for sleep in school – or ever

YOU PROBABLY HEAR it all the time. Fatigue or being just plain tired is common enough between both the more and less diligent students.

The more diligent students spend their late night hours studying, burning midnight oil as if it’s free.

The less diligent spend their nights partaking in all the alcohol, drugs and casual sex they can find as if they have six months to live.

Be your headaches and fatigue from overbearing stress and that next project or from having too much to drink the previous night — or a little of both — you are still too tired to be of use to anyone.

Too tired to write the essay, too tired to go to class or colloquium, too tired to sleep, ironically.

Now imagine what it’s going to be like this summer. Chances are, you will or won’t have a job. That’s just the way things work.

You will still be tired, if because your meager paycheck from Adam’s Ribs won’t be sufficient to pay the rent. That’s what splitting the rent with roommates is for.

Or, you’ll be tired because all those roommates you need to pay the rent aren’t pulling their weight around the house and you’re the one that ends up scraping the mildew out of the shower.

Or, you’ll be tired because you’re putting in long hours at work to pay for your share of the rent, even as you’re not able to pull your weight around the house.

Or, you’ll be tired from the manner in which your boss practices for the World’s Most Obtuse Human Being Pageant every day.

If you don’t get a job, you’ll be tired from either the job search or all that sleeping you’ll be doing.

You can bet that you’d be getting grief whether you’ll live at home or on a friend’s couch and don’t have a job.

You could always live on the street, but then the collection of aluminum cans would occupy your day, and I sincerely doubt you’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep out in the cold, hard world. You’ll certainly get really tired really quickly.

At the end of the summer, surviving through succumbing to either tenacity or insanity, you’ll come back to school next semester tired and willing to submit once again to the will of your choice of higher education.

What’s that? You’re graduating? Good luck finding a job, and I mean that as sincerely as I can, even though it is out of character for me to say that.

In that case, don’t plan on getting much sleep once you have a real job.

You’ll sleep on some weekends. At least you’ll have plenty of money for working so diligently. After taxes and social security, you’ll probably start at a good $29,000 a year. You could retire early if you save your money.

Except for rent or mortgage, insurance, car payments, food, utilities, gasoline, television, Internet and your Columbia Record Club subscription.

You could still retire early, but it would take some clever playing of the stock market and some high-risk investments.

Being tired will never end. Might as well get used to it.

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