screwing-up slowly but surely

[waddle]

It's 11 PM. I'd just finished eating a late dinner. I decide to check my email once more. You know, just in case my advisor sent me something in the last two hours. "You have no new emails." I have no friends. (Props if you get the reference. ) Figure I might as well read a chapter in this book about programming before I go to sleep (I've been trying to learn to program so that I can move beyond Excel and actually make sense of my data). Get distracted and download & test a bunch of cool software only tangentially related to my work. Realize it's 3 AM and I didn't read that chapter. (Didn't feel too guilty about procrastinating on sleep at the time, as I'd just finished catching up a pile of work I'd neglected while I was out in the field, and needed to do something (relatively) mindless.) I read that chapter, set my alarm, and go to sleep after reading a couple of lines of a paper. Wake up to alarm at 9 AM. Hit the snooze button. (Except I didn't hit the snooze button. Somehow my half-asleep self managed to re-set my alarm to 12 midnight.) Wake up again. Hm, judging from the solar angle, it seems later than 10 AM. Look at clock. It's 11:30 AM. (!!!!!!) I just slept right through a research group meeting. Sit at my desk for an hour being discouraged & angry at myself.

This is the second time this has happened. (I'd missed a class session earlier in the term due to oversleeping. That was three days after I'd gotten back from a long and sleep-depriving session of field work halfway across the world, so I didn't beat myself up too much for that, but vowed never to let that happen again. As you can see, I can't keep my own promises.) This was just ridiculous, unprofessional, and immature. I feel like an undergrad, except I don't think I've ever even missed things like this during undergrad because of sleeping in. I am so ashamed of myself and I feel like I deserve to be kicked out now.

Ever since I started grad school a few months ago, I've been making unnecessary mistakes (usually because of bad decisions on my part) like this, in research, classes, and life in general. I'm not sure how I made it here, but I'm pretty sure I'm not doing anyone a favor (least of all myself) with these stupid, stupid screw-ups.

P.S. I'm not sure why I posted this; I guess I just wanted to vent somewhere, and figured this would be the place to do it. Sorry to be a such a downer!

Edited December 3, 2011 by waddle

[mandarin.orange]

While the flexibility of the grad student schedule is great, it also means that you are more prone to this phenomenon:

Sounds like you got sucked into a computer vortex. Personally speaking, it's one of my biggest vices. Even on days with the option to sleep in, my sleep is just really, really crappy if I'm on the computer until, say, 3-4 am.

When I'm really busy, I have to pick a target bedtime and turn off my electronics 2 hrs prior; it helps my mind unwind and I can do reading, light chores or whatnot.

For long periods when I don't stick to this rule, my life gets suddenly erratic and disjointed.

[gellert]

I'm not even in grad school yet, but with the killer influence of no-summer-vacation + senioritis, I'm feeling the exact same way.

I wish I could say I had some brilliant, starry-eyed advice for you, but I really don't. All I have is commiseration. Good luck.

[Eigen]

I personally find the only thing that works for me is picking a reasonable wake up time and sticking to it. I've never been able to make myself get tired/go to sleep early, but eventually my schedule evens out if I get up early enough. Some nights it means I get half an hour or a couple of hours of sleep, but that usually means I'm tired enough the next night to hit the sack at around 10pm and get a good nights sleep. This idea really only works if you can function well on a few hours of sleep, however. I may be a bit tired with an hour nap before my next day, but I can still pretty easily put in a solid 8-10 hours of work... My wife, on the other hand, really can't manage the next day without a solid nights sleep.

[ktel]

What works for me is the fact that my boyfriend works full time and thus is forced to keep a normal schedule. I don't feel like I can stay up late if he's going to bed at 10pm, and thus I follow a "normal person" schedule. Although I've never been much of a late night worker.

Sounds like you know you've screwed up and that you have bad habits. Now to fix them....always the problem.

[lydiag]

Slept through half of my last day of a class the other day because I somehow turned off my alarm in my sleep... granted it was after being up until 4 writing a paper and then not able to sleep until 6 because I had to battle a spider that crawled across my arm right when I was about to go to sleep... UGH dorms...

What I did in undergrad and when working and will apparently have to adopt again is having a second alarm on the other side of the room set for about 10 minutes after I'd want to get up, just in case. That way there's no shutting it off and falling back asleep because you have to actually get out of bed to turn it off.

[mandarin.orange]

What works for me is the fact that my boyfriend works full time and thus is forced to keep a normal schedule. I don't feel like I can stay up late if he's going to bed at 10pm, and thus I follow a "normal person" schedule.

You're lucky! Were my BF here, I'd do the same.

When left to my own devices, I can become my own worst enemy, as far as procrastination goes.

[singlecell]

Does your bedroom get sunlight? I wake up much easier when there is morning sun coming in, so I try to open the shades way up if I know I have something important to get up for the next morning. I also have a "failsafe" alarm set in another room besides the bedroom so I have to physically get up to silence it. I downloaded an app for android which makes me do a math problem in order to silence the alarm.

[BlueRose]

You're going to screw up; the important thing is learning how to screw up less.

I struggle with mornings too - I'm a night owl, and 9am classes are tough. (In undergrad, I just didn't go to class...sadly I have to act like a grownup now.) The alarm-across-the-room trick helps. I've also bought blue-light blocking glasses for when I'm on the computer late at night, and they have seriously changed my life. (Blue light resets your body clock, and computers emit lots of it.) No more chronic insomnia, though I'm still more sharp at 9pm than 9am.

[rising_star]

This is why I set either two or three alarms depending on how urgently I need to be somewhere.

[katerific]

post

story of my life

edit: I would love an alarm clock that flies up and repeatedly hits me in the face or something, because man, I take my sleeping seriously.

Edited December 10, 2011 by katerific