The pre-industrial era is particularly interesting to me regarding sleep. People's sleeping cycles mainly reflected the cycles of the sun, and seasons. They did however have a small break in the middle of the night where they would be awake for an hour or so at a time. People would stir to do all sorts of activities such as house work, visiting neighbors, attending local pubs, and making love. Today we find it strange that they would wake up in the middle of the night just to do these activities. Questions I ask myself about this time are why didn't they just stay up a little later? or wake up a little earlier? I myself would be VERY grumpy if my husband woke me up in the middle of the night just to get it on. The invention of electricity has been one of the major contributors to us staying up later and sleeping through out the night.

Irony is my favorite kind of humor, it makes me laugh in a sort of pathetic, paltry way. I was reading the material for last week "Sleep We Have Lost" and fell asleep on the floor while using the massive printed out copy as a pillow. When I awoke around 3-4 I wiped the drool off my face, and the copy and drug my limp body into the lofted dorm bed. The next morning all I could do was chuckle at my self as I moved my head slowly due to the large crick in my neck. Groggy mornings lead to late night studying, while my late nights full of studying lead to my groggy mornings. It's a vicious cycle that only weekends, and time management can cure. Both of which are low on stock.

It's amazing how much our world has changed, with all the technology, social factors, and general cultural shift that we have experienced. Even our sleeping lives have changed. In the Pre-Industrial days sleep was broken into two parts with a hour or two of wakefulness separating them. During this time people would perform lots of tasks, and visit with others. It was kind of like their social hour, people were busing during the day working to make a living so they made time for social interactions in the middle of the night. Smart. The people did however still attain the eight hours of sleep needed, they simply would go to bed earlier around nine or ten. A Danish pastor once quoted "Stay til nine you are my friend/ Til ten, that is alright/ but if you stay til 11 you are my enemy" the people in this time period went to bed much earlier than we do now days when the night is usually full of our social interactions. The peculiar way that society has been evolving from having a couple hours in the middle of the night to wake, to staying up later.

This weekend I attended a speech and debate tournament in Tulsa, we left Friday morning and returned Monday morning around 2. Throughout the weekend I was up late hours, and rose early to get to the competition. When we returned Monday morning I was tired and irritable I proceeded to crash into bed to be later awakened by my 5:30 alarm, it was time to get up and get moving. I dressed and got ready for the day ahead of me, then I was off to Lubbock to judge a debate tournament. Throughout the past weekend I noticed that my irritability was the least of my problems, much darker thoughts started to cloud my horizon of thought. I knew it was because of my lack of sleep and large amounts of stress but it was still disturbing. This is why I will not be conducting a sleep deprivation experiment, my mental health is worth much more to me.

When trying to decide what should be my topic for my research paper in this class, I decided that my efforts should be focused maybe not on the most researched topic, but one that was very interesting to me. I will be writing my paper over sleep deprivation. I will be expanding on the side effects, emotionally, mentally, and physically. I will be conducting an experiment myself to better understand my topic, and have some first hand knowledge. At the end of the paper I will draw some conclusions about why not sleeping for a certain amount of time causes these effects on our bodies.

Several weeks ago I went to the balloon fiesta in Albuquerque New Mexico, which is an awesome event and anyone who has the opportunity to go totally should. We needed to be there around 6:30-7:00 in the morning, and since people from all around the nation fill up all of the hotels in Albuquerque we decided to stay at a family friends house about two hours away from Albuquerque we had to get up around 3:30 to make it in time. We left the fiesta around 11 and we drove all the way back to Clovis (where I am from) to have dinner. I left my house in Clovis around 7 and returned back to Wayland around ten. I had a paper that I needed to get working on so I continued to stay up and work. I kept working until I fell asleep around 5 in the morning. Least to say I didn't go to church that morning. To get through this excruciating day I had around 7-8 cups of coffee. When I was trying to go to sleep I was exhausted but I was wired and couldn't seem to rest. The next day I woke up around 11 and got up to work some more on my paper, through out the day I noticed if any one said anything negative to me, even little things, I reacted much more than I would normally. My emotions, especially negative were heightened. So the moral of the story is when you haven't been sleeping well, don't make rash decisions you may regret it later.

Caffeine is one of the new staples of the American society. When I think of hard working people I think of them with a arm full of files in one hand and a cup of strong black coffee in the other. Since our society is so fixated with money and the accumulation of it, people have become obsessed with working. The time that these people have been putting in work has to come from somewhere, and people don't want to give up on their families, or fun activities so most of the time, so that time comes out of their sleep, and resting time. When you are tired though your brain is slower and cant remember as much as when you are well rested. Coffee, and other caffeinated drinks is a great pick me up to get you to the place where you can work efficiently. Coffee, and those other drinks have slowly been turning to a very helpful tool, to now a crutch something that we are addicted to.