| Put health first, books later (4/05) | | Print | |
| Written by Michelle Lee | |
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It was 2:45 a.m. and I was just starting my English essay. As I sat in front of my computer, my body and my mind started a lively debate. “Go to bed!,” body said. “No! I have to finish this essay,” mind refuted. “Do it tomorrow, you need your sleep.” “Sleep is for the weak.” “I rest my case.” The verdict: I managed to finish the dreadful essay and squeeze in a grand total of an hour and 50 minutes of beauty sleep, then I breezed through school like I had just gotten 15 hours of sleep. However, my body was right: I did need sleep. Throughout the rest of the week, I began falling asleep in classes. Nevertheless, I continued to work late into the night for the rest of the semester, losing irreplaceable hours of sleep, even though I would feel terrible the next day. I was convinced that I could handle losing sleep because of my youth. My view, however, changed after a deadly incident. My cousin Rosanna, an ambitious 32-year-old Pepsi marketing executive, has had a complicated medical past. Ten years ago, she had a bone marrow transplant. After surgery, the doctor recommended that she take a break and let her body recover. She took the advice for a while, but after a year, she went back to her packed study schedule. During the next eight years, she found numerous jobs, each one a higher position and she was recently promoted to the position of marketing executive. However, this glory was short-lived. On Feb. 10, while eating dinner with a friend, she suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage, an abnormal and very dangerous condition in which blood collects beneath the brain membrane. She fell into a coma and needed immediate surgery. Unfortunately, she lost her short-term memory and now acts as if she were a little girl. Although stress and fatigue did not directly lead to her hemorrhage, they definitely contributed. She accumulated a vast number of sleepless nights and always carried the burden of meeting deadlines and pleasing both clients and superiors. After all her hard work, it is sad that she can no longer climb that promotion ladder. Lacking short-term memory is just as bad as having no memory at all. What happened to my cousin could happen to anybody. It serves as a reminder of how sleep deprivation and stress from making deadlines and trying to ace classes can be devastating. At an extremely competitive school like Lowell, students — including myself — tend to place studying and classes above health. While normal teenagers are out shopping and hanging out with friends, most of us are at home slaving away at loads of homework. Life does not end with high school, it’s not always all about studying, but above the relationships we make and the memories we share. Now ever y time I’m up past midnight my body says, “I’m sorry, honey. I hate to burst your bubble, but you’re not the energizer bunny.” And my weary mind always responds, “Touché.” |
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to listen.
