Days and Nights

As most people who know me at all know all too well, I'm a night owl to the max. Every time I start a new school year, I get all excited about a chance to have a clean start and make myself into a morning person, but that's never worked out. So, now I have a new plan: switch my day and night. My flatmate, Keiko, helped me come up with it and I think it has the potential for genius. Here's how it goes.

The facts:

I have class from 8-5 or 6 pretty much every day, so I have to be awake then

I get my best studying done around 1-3 or 4 in the morning...I've tried to change that, but I can't

I usually will only get about 3-4 hours of sleep because of the previous 2 facts

I generally don't have set plans after school

The plan:

Sleep directly after school (5:30 or 6:30 until 12:30 or 1:30 or thereabouts). Then get up,have "breakfast" and go to the Caroline House (the new student center on the medical school campus that's open 24/7 and a GREAT study place aside from being kinda cold) and study until 7:30 or so, have "lunch" and then go to class. What is lunch for everyone else will become my dinner time, and then off to the afternoon classes, after which I will go home to sleep and repeat the cycle. Sounds promising right? After all, I'll be much more awake during my morning classes than I usually am and I can study when my mind actually wants to.

Guess I was born for the night shift...

On another note: I've realized that one of the best studying techniques for me is to have something going on in the background. So last night I watched Jane Eyre and the Stranger (each from the 1940s), 3 documentaries (one on women in Afghanistan, one on homeless health care in LA, and the other on the war in Darfur) and listened to the Doctors Without Borders updates about meningitis in several places in Africa, and caught up on world events by listening to the BBC news podcast, and listened to a few old time radio shows (the Shadow and Jack Benny). The surprising thing is that I actually feel like I took in a lot more information about bacteria, viruses, fungi, and their role in respiratory tract illnesses than I would have just sitting there in silence or with music on. And it gives me a motivation to sit down and study because I want to listen/watch those other things too.

So yeah, that's all that I have for now. Gotta hop in the shower and then get some sleep because we're hosting a dinner at our place tonight witch already has the potential to throw off my new schedule haha.

Love you and miss you all!!!