I am back.

Welcome to another essay post-op, in which I talk about all manner of thing in an attempt to ‘write off some steam’ after having spent the last nine hours (the past week and a half, really) finishing up some assignment required of me by my excellent course here at Bradford. In this case, that assignment being my dissertation proposal. It is 2:30 a.m., so certainly not as bad as it could have been. I say that, but I don’t want you to get the impression that I’m alright with this sort of behavior. Having to finish an essay in the wee hours of the deadline day constitutes a failure of sorts for me, or at least it is an indication that something has gone wrong. That said, from about noon yesterday there was really no doubt in my mind that I’d get it done in fairly good time (again, the meaning of ‘good time’ having been revised relative to the time remaining), the only question was one of quality. On that count, I’m not sure. I’ve never submitted a dissertation proposal before. I don’t think it was very good, but I also don’t think it was very, very bad. Ultimately it’s rather inconsequential as it only counts for 15% of the overall dissertation mark, so all I need is a decent mark, and more importantly I allegedly still have a lot of leeway to change my question and even my topic should I so desire. Which I will, I’m sure of it. In the end, I was forced to write this proposal more to what I’d read (which was far-reaching at the expense of depth) rather than to what I precisely wanted. Which would have been difficult in any case because I could not for the life of my figure out what I wanted to write about!

(I should warn you, since I haven’t done these in a while, that they tend to be fairly messy, even messier than my other posts on this site; partially because of the hour, more because I’m letting out an excess. But I write them because I like reading them later, and again much later.)

This assignment was a real challenge because it was a collision of often conflicting desires. It is the first step of the long-revered dissertation; it is a big deal. I want to do something sensational, though the rational voice in my head, and most lecturers advise against such fantasies. I at least want to do something interesting to read by someone who knows a lot and reads a lot and generally doesn’t expect much from undergraduate dissertations. So that puts pressure on myself, as I generally do, only this time it’s more.

It’s also hard because Bradford, or the Peace Studies Department rather, is quite alternative. Alternative, and broad. We have studied so much; I have studied so much in my first two years. To try to do something encapsulating all of that would be impossible; to do something representing a lot of that would also be impossible; I must resign myself to not covering some, even many, things that I am very interested in and somewhat knowledgeable about. 

Probably due to the alternative nature of the course, towards the end of my second year I was leaning towards doing a dissertation on peacebuilding and reconstruction. But then I went away to France and got a decent, if decidedly more mainstream, year of education. Which put me more onto politics and mainstream international relations, and getting into American talk shows certainly didn’t hurt that (probably because it was an election year). So I came back from France in a more mainstream frame of mind, and now I find myself doing a dissertation proposal about US diplomacy and recent wars in the Middle East.

But I hate feeling like I’m being mainstream, or safe, or boring. So I’m trying to wrench a mainstream topic in an unconventional direction, which is a bad thing to do on the night before the proposal is due. To be honest I wouldn’t be able to say exactly where the proposal I handed in, or will hand in in some hours would fall on the spectrum, nor can I say where my final dissertation will fall. We’ll see.

So there were a lot of warring desires that went into my preparation for this dissertation proposal, and it didn’t help that everything I read became my new big interest – there came a point where I just had to force myself to stop reading and start writing, which doesn’t mean my knowledge was good enough to start writing, only that time constraints demanded it.

Never mind. I did alright, I think, and it’ll be interesting to see what I get for it. Take tomorrow- er, today, off, then refocus and do more reading while I don’t have to be writing much.

Take today off, that is, until 3 pm. I’ll hand in the two copies well before then, prepare myself for my radio show, go on at 3, rock out (jazz out) till 5, then send an email to my Security module group about meeting the following day, then make my presentation about my year abroad, also for the following day. Easy stuff, though. And then when I give my presentation I receive my awards for submissions in the study abroad competitions, so I can finally buy some proper football kit and maybe some more thin ties.

It’s funny, I don’t get to dress up very much and yet when I have some money to spend on clothing, what I want to spend it on most is formal wear. So I have to compromise and find something that can double as casual wear without looking too pretentious. I do need some new shoes as well. I sound awfully first world right now.

Yes, I have a radio show! You can listen to it, wherever you are in the world, if you have an internet connection, which, if you’re reading this, I assume you do. Gotcha! Just go to ramair.co.uk and click listen at whatever the equivalent of 3-5 pm GMT on Tuesdays is for you. I do jazz. All manner of jazz. It is seriously a great way to chill out from studying, an activity tomorrow’s show will embody perfectly. Since I didn’t have time this week to prepare a representative selection from a certain era, as I’ve been promising I’ll do, that plan will be delayed at least one week, but I think you’ll enjoy my fusion. I love me some jazz fusion.

There’s plenty else I could say, about how I haven’t made a YouTube video in ages and really need to get back on that but this year is busier than I expected, or about another deadline I have next week that won’t be easy either, or about how much I enjoyed watching Ender’s Game and kind of cried through the end of it, and how I want to explain its brilliance to all who don’t understand, and then use it as part of my series on why I am probably a dictator at heart (it’s not a light piece), but I will leave all that for another day. Against my better judgment, I am going to break into my celebratory caramel dip (and delicious quadruple chocolate cookies, a birthday present from a friend) tonight, not tomorrow, while watching an episode of Suits. Tempted to watch a full-blown movie, but that’d be a bit much. I do, after all, need to wake up to turn in my assignment. Not quite off the hook yet.

I hope you all have had as wonderful a night as I, though hopefully a more restful one, and that you are always diligent in what you know you should do, and that you keep thinking critically about things, and that you write me every once in a while.

Good night. Sorry if there are any typos in this.

Day 16: Forty-Two Hours

Like I said, I had a lot planned for Thursday. Didn’t mean for everything to get pushed up against the end like this, but after turning in my two essays to the undergraduate office that morning, I didn’t care, I was free. Normally I try not to put all my self-worth into a single task, but when that single task is part of what’s keeping me in this country, and I’d have to pay supposedly £100 for a late submission, things are a bit different.

I had a one-hour make-up lecture from the week cancelled due to snow, and then three more hours of regular lectures. All four were international relations. I’ve really liked both lecturers we’ve had for this module, and I recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity to study it anywhere. That’s my focus within Peace Studies at the moment, though I get the chance to change it before going in to second year. The extent of the goodness of next semester’s Conflict Resolution will largely determine whether I switch or not. However, I can’t deny that I struggled to keep my head up in it today. I soon slipped into the cycle of nod off, pry eyes open, listen, nod off…tried to break it with gum, but English stuff was just too weak. Used another precious Japanese piece, and that kept me up for a while.

Ultimately, though, the best antidote was walking in the brisk Bradford winter air, as we did when we went shopping between the first two hours and the second two. I was intent to make the most of my first day of weight-off-my-shoulders and managed to assemble the final ingredients for attempting my mum’s eggnog recipe, which I tried my hand at after finishing lectures at 5.

Oh, before I go on, I had a Peace Society meeting between morning and afternoon lectures as well, and though I’m sorry to say  our last meeting of this year was poorly attended and uninspired, through no fault of the members present, I did volunteer to make a “Peace Times” Peace Society Newspaper website. I’m thinking I’ll use WordPress, but do you guys have any ideas for this? I know most of you aren’t Peace Studies, but, you know, what would you wanna see in an online newspaper? I’m hoping to get a start on that this break.

Right. With the last lectures of my first semester finished, and finished with applause, which only our international relations lecturers received this year, I headed back to my flat for some Christmas-itising of my beverage choice.

For those of you who’ve never had eggnog, it’s fantastic, but I wouldn’t have been too quick to offer my concoction as your first sampling. I ran into a few problems, though not what I had originally worried about – getting the correct ingredients. I think it’s safe to say evaporated milk and dried milk are the same thing. But I didn’t have enough of certain ingredients! My vanilla flavouring, which is apparently one of the most expensive liquids in the world, was only 38 ml when I needed 45, and the dried milk was lacking about another cup. Furthermore, I had no electric mixer, so while I could do a decent number on the eggs, beating the milk powder into the water proved challenging. I never did get all the lumps out, and finished with a thick, lumpy, overwhelmingly richly sweet nog of egg.

Yes, the flavour was actually not bad. I devoured it over the weekend, sprinkling my proudly acquired ground nutmeg on it each time, and though I was sick of it by the end (tried to drink it too fast as our date for bussing to London approached) it was ever so worth it. With an electric mixer and proper proportions, I feel I could do a well good job.

After the eggnog I was hungry for supper so I succeeded in making what I’d call my best spaghetti yet. Sure, it was only store-bought bolognese sauce, but I added minced meat (not to be confused with mincemeat, though they are at times used interchangeably), chopped up hot dog wieners (not worthy of the same title ascribed to the varieties of sausage my German friends have allowed me to sample), and onions (nothing worth parenthetically asiding here except ow, my eyes), and it was good. Made enough for two meals, though the second half proved problematic to finish before leaving. I had more food at the end than I’d realised.

Before I knew it it was time to go meet the Christian Union for…ice skating! After several weeks of watching the uni hockey team battle it out on ice, I was eager to get back out there and see if I hadn’t completely lost any ability to stay upright. As it turned out, I had not, and it was immensely fun. Will certainly be going several more times next semester. I guess this winter will be one of ice skating rather than snowboarding, but that’s alright. Ice skating is one of those things that, while perhaps considered less-that-manly by some (there are those gender roles again), I’ve always wanted to be good at. One of the many things, I should say.

It cleared out shortly before the hockey team practice at 11:00 (I don’t envy their practice and game hours) so we basically had the place to ourselves to revel in our antics. The diving stomach-slide, however, did not pan out. That and the matching scratches and blisters from budget skates were the only negatives of that excursion.

Back to the campus! Some of the Union went…somewhere…but I returned to the university for the Peace Studies end-of-semester party (this is what I meant by busy day, two parties in one night, yeehaw, party animal and all that) By this time I’d all but forgotten about the previous night, or lack of it, and aimed to thoroughly enjoy myself. Unfortunately it was mostly master’s students (either they’re much more into socialising with fellow peace studiers or they recover from deadlines much more quickly) but we enjoyed the company and the candy- er, sweets, but that kills my alliteration. Saw some classmates drunk that are usually much more dignified, and some that aren’t, had the distinct pleasure of having grown up in Japan and witnessing two non-Asians discussing anime with more interest and knowledge than I could ever muster, and enjoyed the company of a high-class native Bradfordian. At least he exudes that aura (not to be confused with aurora, not that you ever would). Really just wanted to use the word ‘exude’. Say it.

But I can’t say anything about drunks, seeing as

• seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%. I was past double this by that point, which, according to Wikipedia, is a level consistent with blunted feelings, disinhibition, extroversion; loss of reasoning, depth perception, peripheral vision, and glare recovery. Me? Surely not!
• After five nights of partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would when you’ve slept enough.

There’s some more sleep facts for ya. Clearly lack of sleep and alcohol are not a safe mix. Funny that it’s such a common mix.

Just when I thought the night was winding down, it wasn’t. Ended up having the most enthralling conversation of the semester, not a moment too soon. Talked for hours, and it all started with personality types. And so I’ll end my recount of this day with a brief discussion of labels.

I claim to hate labels. I’ve said that several times on this site. And yet I was challenged on this point today, because I use them on others and I use them on myself. My defence was that while labels describe what a person is, they can never fully grasp who a person is. And that’s true. But I’m guilty of stopping at that shallow label level, and worse, I’m guilty at stopping with the labels of my own judgements, not even the ones they stick on themselves. I don’t need to meet people to think I know all that I need to know about them. I don’t need to meet people to not like them.

I’m terribly judgemental but that doesn’t have to keep being me. I hope to one day outrun this, but know inside that it’ll take much more than running. While I believe I have grown more accepting of people and lifestyles (emphasis on style, not life), I’ve also grown more arrogant in presuming my first impressions of people be accurate and unchangeable, by them or by me. That’s flat out wrong. I guess I want you guys to know that I know it’s wrong, even though it’s how I am, right now.

So I’m guilty of using labels on others, and I’m also guilty of using them on myself. INTJ…MK…TCK…even the fact that they’re all acronyms reveals something. I use labels to distance myself from people, to say both overtly and implicitly that I’m different from you and you won’t be able to bridge that gap because you don’t even know what I am, unless I condescend to walk with mortals. And it’s justification in numbers: I’m different (read: better) and it’s not just me that thinks so, we’ve got a proper group thing going on that you’ll never be a part of.

While the whole what-I-am-not-who-I-am definition of labels still stands, I’m realising that I’m not as free from this as I thought. Labels are distance, and I use them just as much as the next guy, if not more, for my labels are cryptic and exclusive.

This was just a fraction of the mullings that conversation engendered, the conversation that marked forty-two hours of wakefulness. Sheesh. Considering bragging rights to be a poor reason to do anything – well, almost anything; things like roller coasters could be made a case for – I promptly went to bed at half past four.

Slept well into the double digits the following morning, it was glorious, though I usually hate doing that. Such a waste of daylight. Well worth it. Everything.

Day 15: Party All Night

I’m not actually writing this at 23:57 on Wednesday the 15th of December. I’m writing this on Sunday the 19th. The past five days have been crazy.

I have a friend who says, “I do procrastinate, and yes, I do regret it” and I think that sums up most people on the planet fairly well, me included. But I think I can say reasonably that I’m also fairly diligent and hard-working, because I take my work seriously and hate being rushed. I’m inefficient, though. I get an image at the beginning of a project of what I want it to look like, and no matter how unrealistic or difficult that image I go for it until time shortage forces me to compromise.

Unfortunately I also suffer from an unreasonable lack of urgency, which probably stems from chronically underestimating how much more time a task will take. This means that by the time I realise there’s no way I can do something the way I want to, it’s often too late to make any choice about how I want to do it.

All that to say that I usually do alright.

When I was a freshman in high school (grade 9) I heard a senior (or had he graduated?) say, “Save the all-nighters for college.” I thought that was good advice at the time, and when I became a senior myself and failed to follow it, I thought it was even better advice. I also discovered how much better three hours is than none. However my first year of college was actually easier than my last year of high school so I was able to gratify my newfound appreciation for sleep without much challenge.

This year I’ve gotten into sleep cycles, meaning that rather than try to get as many hours of sleep as possible, I measure by 1.5 hours. 7.5 is optimum, 6 is manageable, 4.5 is unfortunate, 3 is unpleasant, and 1.5 is a nap. With my low number of lecture hours per week and high number of hours I choose what to do with, I’ve been able to do most of my study during the day (well, day-ish, the sun goes down around four here) and keep my sleep sacred.

We’ve had four deadlines this semester, the last two being two essays apiece. The November 25th one was a bit tight but I pulled together and put out what I thought were two fairly decent papers (which, due to my forgetfulness, I will have to wait until next semester to find out my grades for). I swore to start earlier for the December 16th deadline, get them finished with time to spare, and enjoy the many events taking place during this last week.

I thought I started earlier. I thought I was being diligent. If it had only been the international relations essay, it would’ve been smashing. But there was the politics one, too.

I chose the topic of citizenship (in Britain and in theory) because I’ve never felt much like a citizen of any country, and wanted to find out more about becoming a British citizen. I even thought that maybe I could put a bit of a personal perspective, and if I did it in a tactful and scholarly manner, even cash in on it (meaning get a better grade than without it, if you can’t follow the vernacular).

But, like I said, I was inefficient. I didn’t start reading soon enough, and when I did, I made the mistake of starting with the feminist perspective.

Hehe.

Don’t get me wrong, I think feminists make a lot of good points. The world’s been stuck in a few ruts for far too long, and they propose ways out of them. But they write so complicatedly! My experience these past few months (backed up by those of a few of my classmates) has been that if you don’t already have a firm grasp of the issue the feminists are critiquing, you won’t get their point either.

So I started with Lister’s book when I should’ve started with Faulks’, because when I, exasperated, switched to the latter, things started coming together in my mind, and when I went back to Lister’s later it too made sense. But I also didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to talk about or what point I wanted to make, and I was trying to marry the very different topics of my own experience and considerable influence of liberalism on British thought surrounding citizenship in theory and practice.

All that to say, this time I didn’t do so alright.

I went for about a week feeling like my every spare minute was devoted to these two essays, but apparently I wasn’t making enough spare minutes, because I got to this last 24 hours and still hadn’t finished either essay. The IR one was in significantly better shape, and I was able to polish it up and submit it to Turnitin only a little past midnight. But politics…

My productivity hovers around zero in the wee hours of the night, and I suspect that nearly everyone’s does, though they refuse to admit it. Some claim that they work much better when pressed up against deadlines, and that they feel better doing it all at once instead of spaced out over several days or weeks. Excuses for laziness, I say. In theory, if one were productive in other things when deadlines weren’t looming and then threw oneself into papers when they were, one would get more done in life than the average person, but this world isn’t primarily theoretical. One can’t go at full speed all the time.

And how much would you actually learn from a paper written like that? This is the problem I have with people who measure the amount of work they have left to do by the required word count minus the number of words they’ve already written. This implies that every word you write is final-draft quality and flows exactly the way you want from intro to conc the first time around. Maybe you can do that, I can’t. I have to get a knowledge base, set up an outline to know what the points are, and only then write the paper. If I don’t do that it’s just shaky regurgitation.

Again, theories and ideals that get discarded when deadlines come calling. I’m happy to be able to say I learned a ton from the essay on citizenship, but in the end I wasn’t to able to do much with it at that time. Wasn’t able to put in my personal perspective either. Had to settle for throwing in 1500 words worth of what I’d discovered, and tie it together into something that would hopefully pass for halfway cohesive. I don’t know about other people, but one of my biggest pet peeves is knowing that I could do something better but not being able to for whatever reason, usually reality.

That said, I do like to think that when I know something needs to be done, I push through it until it is. Finished about 8:30 (‘finished’ here being a word used to mean ‘wrote a bunch and shifted it around to formulate some sort of message and get within the acceptable word count range and disliked the content but realised I had to go with it’). Was hoping to finish before sunrise and, seeing as I’d been up all night, make it at least a little worth it by taking in one of the most magnificent and inspiring sights nature has to offer (and to think it puts on the show every morning, regardless of whether anyone’s watching!), but alas, by the time I headed for the library to print 32 pages (two copies of each essay) it was already light. Fortunately the final-day frantic printing crowd I’d heard so much about was yet to be seen and I obtained the fruits of my labours without hassle.

It’s an interesting feeling going into a day on zero sleep. For one thing, the previous day feels like morning, and this day the afternoon of one massive, druggy day. With the morning light, shower, and breakfast, tiredness is chased away, but it’s always lurking, waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting. But I had a fairly busy day planned. In a season like this with brisk, refreshing air, it’s not too hard to forget how non-existent the previous night was. And if I don’t sleep in the morning it becomes a running count, bragging rights for some future, worthless conversation.

Funny thing to brag about, how little we sleep. Really the person who wins is the one who gets the most sleep and still gets a lot done. But it’s not the fact that people brag about not sleeping that annoys me the most, it’s when people act like they didn’t sleep when they really did. Saying things like,

“I just pulled an all-nighter!”

“I didn’t sleep at all last night!”

“I was up all night working on this.”

etc., when really they slept as much as three or four hours, and most likely were not working even most of the time they were awake; they were watching YouTube videos. Or people say they only slept three hours when it was more like five. If you’re going to brag, fine, but get the facts straight.

Here are some facts for ya:

• The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes during a rocking chair marathon. The record holder reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.
• REM dreams are characterised by bizarre plots, but non-REM dreams are repetitive and thought-like, with little imagery – obsessively returning to a suspicion you left your mobile phone somewhere, for example.
• Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep, but lie down for REM sleep.
• Some scientists believe we dream to fix experiences in long-term memory, that is, we dream about things worth remembering. Others reckon we dream about things worth forgetting – to eliminate overlapping memories that would otherwise clog up our brains. (Another one of those instances where it’s all belief and reckoning, but for some reason we think it holds more weight because they’re ‘scientists’. If it were more than a belief, they would’ve used a different word, though sometimes they use stronger words when they really mean just ‘believe’.)
• Scientists have not been able to explain a 1998 study showing a bright light shone on the backs of human knees can reset the brain’s sleep-wake clock.
• British Ministry of Defence researchers have been able to reset soldiers’ body clocks so they can go without sleep for up to 36 hrs. Tiny optical fibres embedded in special spectacles project a ring of bright white light (with a spectrum identical to a sunrise) around the edge of soldiers’ retinas, fooling them into thinking they have just woken up. The system was first used on US pilots during the bombing of Kosovo.
• Feeling tired can feel normal after a short time. Those deliberately deprived of sleep for research initially noticed greatly the effects on their alertness, mood and physical performance, but the awareness dropped off after the first few days.
• Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet. (Didn’t need them to be experts, but did need it to be said.)

Good stuff, eh? More to come with tomorrow’s tales.

Back on this topic of bragging, I submit that it’s not really an all-nighter unless you stay up the following day as well, otherwise it’s just staying up really late. Anyone can do that.

But I don’t see why so many people want to, and want to repeatedly. I did what I had to, I’m not proud of the result other than that I finished, and if I can I intend to never stay up all night writing a paper again unless I’m really interested in it, although I know it will inevitably become necessary again. Uni life: there’s what you want, and what you do. Wait…Life: there’s what you want, and what you do.

So save the all-nighters for forever, kids, but do what you have to and take pride in it and suffer silently.

And this was only the beginning of the craziness which I’m hurriedly trying to catch up to in my journaling.