A Cry For Sleep

I can’t decide what sounds worse: eight to ten math problems a night for only three or four days a week, or giving up a sleep-in to go to 8 a.m. math class. With the added auxiliary block for classes 410 to 430, I wish I were in the accelerated sequence again. Even with all the added stress of being in the accelerated course, I think it would make up for my current lack of sleep-ins.After not having the auxiliary period for a year now, it was a complete shock the first morning I had to wake up at 7 a.m. for math class. Last year, sleep-ins were the norm for me, and I had 8 a.m. class only once or twice a week. Now, I’m back on my prep year schedule of having only one sleep-in a week, except I don’t have a prep’s workload; I have an upper’s.Last year it was a grind to get myself to 8 a.m. class, but now that I have more work, it’s even worse. My sleep schedule has evolved around having sleep-ins, and now that I don’t, I’m more tired than I usually would be.No one is awake at 8 a.m. for math anyway. We all stumble in, some of still eating our D-Hall bagels, and we spend twice as long to put up our half-done, mediocre solutions on the board. Everyone has just woken up and can’t comprehend the calculus right away, so more time is wasted.We get only four to five problems a night, but since it feels as if we have so much extra class time in the term from the added meeting time each week, we have no sense of urgency to complete the problems each day. We only really complete three or four of those problems assigned, so in reality, we’re probably far behind.The extra class meeting is supposed to help students and allow them to do more of the challenging calculus in class, rather than in their dorm rooms at night. If done right, in theory, this should help, and probably does, but because we feel like we have so much time—enough time to go over everything very in-depth so that every single person in the class understands each concept thoroughly before moving on—that we end up using a lot more time than necessary.But it’s not all bad. The added class would potentially allow us to review more before tests because we can use that extra class purely for review if we raise the homework problems a little to make up for it during the week before a test, from four or five to five to six problems, which still isn’t that many. This was an option for our class, but we opted to just do four to five problems a night, without a review day, instead.If the extra block was used efficiently enough to make up for the loss of the sleep-in, it would be worth it. Because we don’t see it as that type of opportunity, however, the extra block isn’t worth it. 