No2: Sleep

It's exam time at uni at the moment, and the lack of lectures (as we're spending our entire days 'revising') means one thing and one thing only - a completely messed up sleeping pattern. In fact, it has got so bad recently I may as well be in a different time zone completely!

4 hours behind and with a beach...looks perfect!

I know (well I'm pretty sure that my numbers are right) that you're supposed to have 7 or 8 hours of sleep a night - more or less than that can lead to an increased risk of diseases such as diabetes or heart attacks. I also know that sleep is generally supposed to be at night time, around 11pm to 7am. I only wish my body would understand this as well as my brain does.

Without the set structure of lectures and seminars my body clock had managed to completely reset itself to be roughly 4 hours behind - I'm not getting tired until the early hours of the morning, and find anything before 11am near-on the same as the middle of the night. I've tried going to bed early (well 11pm feels early even if it isn't) and setting an alarm for the morning, but it simply doesn't work. I physically can't force myself to sleep and I can easily sleep through 20+ minutes of my alarm.

When counting sheep I only get to 2...

'Try to count sheep' everyone tells me, but I have a really short attention span - I'll imagine a field of sheep and start counting them as you should. However, then I'll get bored and decide that an estimate of the number of sheep in said field is good enough for the farmer or whoever needs their sheep counting and my mind moves onto the next thing. No matter how many times I try this, it's always the same result: roughly 45 sheep in the field and me still awake. Please tell me I'm not the only one?!

Claire xx