The Five Stages of Sleep Deprivation

By Tamiera Vandegrift on December 14, 2015

Disclaimer: The writer of this article was living off of barely two hours of sleep while writing this.

The end of the semester is upon us, which can mean one of two things for you, my dear reader. Either, A) you’re crawling home for winter break with what’s left of your dignity and life force, or B) your heart is in your stomach as you approach the ninth circle of college Hell, otherwise known as finals week. What is the punishment of those unfortunate souls that have been damned to this circle, you may ask? Well, that punishment comes in exactly five sleepless stages:

5. Denial

Here is the stage where you deny your mortality entirely. The rules of human life no longer apply to you as you feverishly tackle the last of your final papers and your studying for exams. In this stage, you’ve restricted yourself inside your campus library, clad only in a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, furiously downing Red Bulls, after Starbucks lattes, after copious amounts of Adderall (If you live that life). The fellow students surrounding you are eyeing you with quite a bit of concern and pity. However, with your dedicated and highly wired drive, you find it easy to ignore them along with thirty-seven messages from your friends and family begging to know if you’re still alive or if they’ll be carting a corpse away from campus rather than a straight-A student. You don’t have a problem, though. You’ll stop when you want to, right?

4. Anger

After a day or so, you find yourself beginning to drift away from your consciousness only to realize how much of a plebian your body is being, which leads you to slam your fists down on your desk, curse the gods, and scream out to the heavens, “I will not surrender!” The library administration have started to pay special attention to you, approaching your table every once in a while to ask if you’re feeling okay or if you’ve eaten since that foggy memory of when you first entered the library. Without answering, you tell them to buzz off with the rage of an asthmatic dragon so you can furiously continue typing away at that ten page final paper that you waited until the last few hours to complete. To stay awake, you continue gulping down an ungodly amount of caffeinated drinks and prescription drugs and routinely slap yourself awake when your body begins to fade on you again. However, that last slap came back with a bit of blood on it, so maybe it’s time to slow down and take a power nap. Or, you can just start doubling the energy drinks. I suppose that works too.

3. Bargaining

It would seem that you’re pretty desperate to survive the week now, my unfortunate friend. You’ve lost track of how much time you’ve spent in this library and your sanity is beginning to wear down. As you tearfully scroll through your Quizlet flashcards, you half-consciously consider emailing your professor a complete and sincere surrender and apology for all the effort you didn’t put into his class, pathetically begging for a single shred of mercy from the final exam. At this point, the only language you can understand is the language of Biology. Every time someone approaches you to ask if you can watch their belongings for a moment, the only way you can respond is by saying, “The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell!” It seems at this point that everyone in your life has abandoned you, including God. At this point, you’re begging Mom and Dad to put more money in your bank account to support your newfound Adderall addiction, to which they respond, “Sorry, kid. Godspeed.” You’ve gone almost two days without eating, sleeping, or showering- or was it a week? Who knows? Your final exam is coming up soon and you have to crush it or risk losing all of your pride as a person.

2. Depression

At this point in the process, you’ve given up hope entirely. It’s clear that the dark, looming forces of that final exam, that’s plotting to completely demolish your soul, is coming with a ravenous hunger for your pride and self-esteem. There’s no point in studying anymore, or trying to keep a passing grade. The war is over and you’ve been defeated worse than that particular orange and blue football team that recently suffered a violent loss as well. The library table you’ve been sitting at for an unmentionably long amount of time is now littered with empty Walgreens bottles and half empty cans of God knows what. You’re now lying facedown, sprawled across the desk, wallowing in your own self-pity and mid-finals depression. You’ve forsaken your family, your friends, your religion, and your pride. The only future that you foresee for yourself is a future at those familiar golden arches for the rest of your days, asking more successful beings if they would like French fries with their meal, as you vicariously live through the college students sitting at that far off table in the distance, silently begging for them to make wiser decisions than you once did. Your body implores you for a moment of rest and sleep, which you continue to deny it. There ain’t no rest for the wicked.

1. Acceptance

It’s time to pick yourself up and move forward now, my fellow collegiate friend. You’ve survived countless hours without a single moment of sleep and your body’s internal clock has learned to accept the facts, turning you into a superior form of human. With the added combined powers of every force, particularly the illegal ones, you feel yourself turning into the Iron Man of academics. You’re impervious to bullets, starvation, and failing grades. The final exam is on the horizon and you’re ready to go forth and destroy the testing room, leaving the teacher’s assistants gasping in shock as to how a student could have been so academically strong. When they ask who you are, you simply reply, “I am the one who passes” before walking off into the sunset.

At this point, hopefully you’ve realized that this has all been a delusion as a result of your sleep deprivation and that your final exam is actually minutes away. Godspeed and enjoy your stay in college Hell.

Follow Uloop

Apply to Write for Uloop News

Join the Uloop News Team

Discuss This Article

Get Top Stories Delivered Weekly

Back to Top

Log In

Contact Us

Upload An Image

Please select an image to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format
OR
Provide URL where image can be downloaded
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format

By clicking this button,
you agree to the terms of use

By clicking "Create Alert" I agree to the Uloop Terms of Use.

Image not available.

Add a Photo

Please select a photo to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format