The GSE

Well, the GSE (Great Sleep Experiment) is officially over. For those of you who don't know what the GSE is really all about, let me explain. It's really quite a simple concept. Because I have displayed an uncanny knack for falling asleep and staying asleep pretty much anywhere and anytime, myself and a few of my friends decided that it would be a good idea to see just how long I really could sleep if I never had any reason to get up. And this is better than say, a Saturday when you know you get to sleep in, because on the Saturday, you hit about 3 in the afternoon, and start feeling guilty and thinking that you might better get up. Not, however, in the GSE. The whole goal is to stay asleep as long as possible, so there is no guilt involved. I am only allowed to get up for either some water or to go use the bathroom, and as soon as I am awake for more than 20 minutes, the whole experiment is over. Also, drug-induced sleep (i.e. benadryl or ny-quill) is not allowed, and staying up for an inordinate amount of time prior to the GSE in order to secure exhaustion is also against the rules. It has to be totally natural, normal sleep. I complied with all of these rules, and although the official end results stand at about 19 hours of total sleep time, I really feel that it could have been much more successful if I would have had better conditions to work with. Here is the breakdown:

4:30pm-10:00pm - couch in living room, which might not seem like the best place to sleep but was surprisingly quiet

10:05pm-9:00am - my bed, where I planned to log the rest of my hours, but was woken to some very loud Dave Matthews being played outside my room at about 9am. Now, I have no problems getting woken to some Dave, in fact that is probably a pretty preferable way to be woken up, but not in the midst of the GSE

9:10am-11:25am - my parents bed, which (after experimenting with some other options) is the only place in the house far enough away from the music to possibly be conducive to sleep.

11:25am-11:35am - still in parents bed, trying to ignore the fact that two of the windows in their room are now being banged on repeatedly because of being re-sealed or something equally detrimental to my whole experiment.

11:37am - GSE declared over

I know I had at least another 5-8 hours in me, so I'm just going to have to wait until the perfect set of circumstances come up and then try for the GSE2. The conclusions I came up with were twofold:

1. I have an incredible capacity to sleep, even when conditions are not optimal.

2. People around here definitely do not have the kind of respect they should for the GSE.