I Had a Nap

These days, I feel exhausted.

Last week, or was it the week before, I fell asleep on the homeward-bound bus and woke up long past my house.  (My husband came to my rescue.)

Today, I had a "nap" that started sometime after loading the dinner dishes into the dishwasher, briefly ended when I was awoken to kiss my girls goodnight, and continued until about 10:30.  I am too groggy to focus on studying for stats, too alert to go back to sleep.  Because I seem to have stopped blinking and my eyes do not water, my eyes are too sore to read.  Although isn't it interesting that just after writing that, my eyes decided to water and I can see a bit more clearly?

I chatted with a co-worker who is an elite athlete earlier today (or yesterday, now that I notice it is past midnight).  She had conducted a lunch and learn for the HR team on sleep habits a while ago.  I had retained that the first four hours of sleep contributed to physical repair and the next four contributed to psychological repair.  I asked her what happens when you wake up in the middle of the night terrified that you are going to fail your stats exam and get kicked out of your beloved MBA program.  She said the following:

The ideal sleep period is from 10pm to 6am.  (That's what I used to do before starting the MBA.)
Between 10pm and 2am, it is physical repair time.
Between 2am and 6am, it is psychological repair time.
If you go to bed at 10pm and wake up at midnight and go back to sleep at 2am (after lots of tossing and turning and driving your mate crazy), you lost out on 2 hours of physical repair.

So...  It looks like I have had 30 mins of physical repair.  If I can fall asleep by 1am, I can get one more hour of physical repair.  If I stay asleep and only wake up when the alarm goes off, I'll get 4 hours of taking care of my head.

That begs the question of the benefit of my extended nap, though.

I am meeting with a tutor tomorrow to establish some strategies for Saturday morning's exam.  I am looking forward to sleeping through the night again.