Personal Narrative: Sleep

“The bad sleep well.” This quote is actually the name of a 1960’s Japanese film directed by the world renowned director Akira Kurosawa. There isn’t much to say about the movie, but it has a key role in the 2005 Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama play Doubt: A Parable. Out of all of the places that the author John Patrick Shanley puts this quote is right at the first page before chapter one and after the preface with two other quotes. The location of the quote and what the quotes say give the reader questions and what happened and maybe foreshadowing what will come in the book.

In the books The Big Sleep and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, both authors, Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep) and Simon Armitage (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), create the protagonist of each story into archetypal knights. The protagonist of The Big Sleep is named Phillip Marlowe and in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight the protagonist is named Sir Gawain. The 3 knightly qualities that we will be focusing on in this essay are self-sacrifice, loyalty and courage. These qualities are displayed throughout each story in different and similar ways throughout each book.

We then began thinking more specifically by looking at how much sleep on average freshmen, sophomore, junior and seniors get per night

09-09-2012 Day 1: I went to sleep at 1:00 am and woke up at 6:11 am. The dream was that my grandmother passed away and that I had nobody to confide in. It got to a point where I just went

I did not sleep well as a child. When I closed my eyes, I was not inundated with calming thoughts, nor fantastical images, but rather assaulted by existential anxieties which coaxed me into undesired ruminations about my being. I believed falling asleep was tantamount to relinquishing control over my ephemeral existence, as there was no guarantee of awakening. I found myself clinging to the present to the detriment of the future, desperately eschewing its hastened arrival for fear that it would not include me in its progression. And yet, every night, hour by hour, I would find myself succumbing to the physical and mental manifestations of sleep deprivation. I would come to plead for the very loss of control that I so viscerally feared, as

Aaron couldn't take his eyes off the window even if he'd physically been able to.

I have always been enchanted by the idea of sleep. As a child, I laid in bed attempting to understand why I was unable to fall asleep. I knew I wasn’t the only one, but the snoring of my family convinced me otherwise. Biology taught me to understand genetics and environmental cues, but they were unable to explain to me how my sleep pattern was different. Unable to figure the cause of my sleep problems, I delved into self-treatments instead. Curiosity for knowledge in sleep therapy prompted my interest in understanding sleep consequences and health.

Every night approximately seven billion people lay their heads down to sleep. Many people hoping for an escape from their chaotic lives, wishing to slip away into a fantasy world that is not based in their own reality. There is a great deal of research on the topic of dreams being fantasy versus a subconscious reality. Do we only dream what we know we could never do with our conscious mind or is it all just outlandish fantasies that will never come to life?

Overview: Today I am going to share some information about sleep and the things that come along with it in hopes of you becoming more informed on the importance of sleep.

There are days I want to pull my hair out and scream, "there has to be an easier way!" There has to be a way to place makeup on faster without looking like Ronald McDonald. Surely there is an easier way to unwind for quicker access to a good night's rest. That is where the rainbow haired maiden with a bubbly personality comes in.

There are a few factors that are essential for life such as breathing or eating, but one of the most essential factor is sleep. Even though the amount of sleep people need differs from one individual to another, the fact is that eventually everyone needs to sleep. People know the importance of sleep, but due to the increased workload and the pressure of society people are getting less sleep. As a result, there has been an increase interest on the effects lack of sleep has on the mind especially the memory of a person. Many questions arose about the relationship between sleep and memory due to the fact most high school and college students have become sleep deprived. For example, does more sleep mean higher grades?

 The goal is to avoid, "clocks on collision," and to allow internal clocks to match external clocks, this is why night shifts are often on weekly rotation.

If I were to wake up as a bug, I initially would be shocked. Unlike Gregor being calm at when he first woke up, I might scream for help. If I woke up completely changed, I might break down in tears and stay in bed until someone came and saved me. Waking up as a bug would change my life and I probably might kill myself because living that way sounds terrible and instead of living like a bug I rather not live.

What do the effects of sleep deprivation have on people? When a person does not get enough sleep, he or she is depriving his or her body of something that it needs. A delightful sleep is one of the most satisfying human experiences with a role to play in supporting a good mood and cognitive acuity as well as in promoting physiologic balance and resilience (Chittora, Jain and Suhalka). People think because they get an insufficient number of hours of sleep, they will not have an emotional impact by it. Sleep is a required need for peoples’ day to day life to be able to perform and stay healthy emotionally and physically. The effects of sleep deprivation are an issue because it affects mood, performance, and health.

“The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to, then forcing oneself to stay awake for days on end must surely come a close second.”