For the first time in my life, I stayed up until 2:30 a.m. on Thursday night to finish a paper for finals. This doesn't sound like a revolutionary statement to any nocturnal college students, but this was a first for me. I like to sleep; it recharges me, it gives me the chance to have sweet dreams and it lets me forget my problems until the next day. But now, I can say that finals took away my sleep time and forced me to finish my paper.

This doesn't mean I haven't ever stayed up late. My family sometimes takes trips to a drive-in movie theater in Pennsylvania, and we don't come back until past 2 a.m. I stayed up all night for the post-high-school-graduation trip to a health spa/gym. Another night I stayed up all night for a church trip where we traveled around New Jersey and watched the sun rise on a rocky hillside.

But those were fun experiences that I voluntarily stayed up for. Finals are not fun. They take your soul and rob you of your innocence. You can't escape. You can only suffer. I did manage to finish my big paper that night, but now I had to spend an entire day wondering if I'm going to sleep again. Thanks a lot, Aesthetic Expressions paper.

I always feel weird when I didn't get enough sleep, though. I don't feel drained or exhausted as I think I should. Instead, I feel energized. I feel like I had a good night's sleep. Which is odd, since I probably slept five hours, not nearly enough to make someone feel like they had a full night's rest. I was pretty upbeat for the whole day as well; I wasn't cranky like I expected. I only started crashing towards the end of the day, when I finally got to sleep in and take back my sleep time.

But now I've notice something even odder. The morning after I slept in was a bad day for me; I was exhausted, yawning a lot and getting irritated by the tiniest things. I don't get it. I got a lot of sleep that night, and yet I was acting grumpier than a really peeved cat. All I wanted to do was sleep, even though I overslept. What happened?

I asked a couple of friends about this, and they gave me their speculations. The final theory we came up with is this: apparently, when you haven't had a full eight hours of sleep, your body is so tired that you become numb to the exhaustion and it feels like you have some energy. On the other hand, when you oversleep, your body wants to go through another sleep cycle, and it is like not having enough sleep.

The world is so hard to comprehend sometimes, but I think I'm too tired to really care. I just want to take a nap. Good night, everyone!