I'm hoping that venting here may help me finally get to sleep, though I'm not sure whether I'm more angry or sad.
Warning: What follows is a long-winded rant written waaay too late at night.
[rant]
It starts last weekend. Everything is going quite well, and I'm looking forward to this weekend because I don't think I'll have a lot of homework (a chem lab report and math should be it). I finish the chem homework that's due Tuesday over the weekend but stupidly procrastinate doing that week's lab report until Monday.
Monday: After eating lunch at about 2:00 pm, I get a horrible stomach ache, accompanied by nausea, that lasts for the rest of the day. I try to finish the lab report, but it's just not happening. I'm allowed one full-credit late lab report per semester, so, figuring that since there's only four more reports after this one, and I'm not too likely to get sick during that time because I have a decent immune system, I decide it'll be fine if I take it this week.
Tuesday: The chem professor moves the due date for the homework (not the lab report) from Thursday to Monday. So, like all good freshmen, I decide I can just do it over the weekend.
Wednesday: In the evening it dawns on me how much homework I've left myself this weekend, but there isn't much I can do about it. Thursdays I don't have much time, so the earliest I'll get to work on it is Friday.
Friday: I wake up with a sore throat. As the day wears on, it develops into a sore throat + low-grade fever. It's probably just a cold, so I see no reason to go to the doctor for it. I still don't manage to get anything done that day.
This is when my stupidity collides with my bad luck.
Saturday: Now the cold hits in full force. I finish the chem homework, but, after spending five (six? seven?) hours on the six-question-long math assignment, I had only finished two questions. I would have spent more time on homework, but frankly all I wanted to do was sleep the entire day. I get to bed at 1 am, having worked on homework almost every second I wasn't eating or asleep.
Sunday: I wake up at 11 am to my mom calling me to pester me about getting a winter coat (the one I brought with me is pretty much just an expensive windbreaker because last year someone stole the inner jacket while I was at an Honors Society meeting). I have almost no voice, but she doesn't care, and she gets upset with me when I don't want to talk. I finish as much of the math as I can (to anyone thinking of taking an honors linear algebra course: that class is hard) and finish last week's lab report. I don't get a chance to start this week's, but overall I'm satisfied with my progress.
But wait, the day's not over yet! My roommate left the dorm at around 6 pm, presumably to go eat dinner. I work on my chem for one hour...two hours...three hours...four hours...until I finally finish it at around 10 pm. But she still isn't back yet. Huh? I don't really want to go to bed until she gets back because I know how annoying it is trying to do stuff in the dark, so I stay up to almost 1 am. I walk down the hallway and ask the floor mentor whether she's seen my roommate. The mentor says she was taken to the hospital because of a cut on her leg. Nothing too serious, but why on Earth didn't it occur to her to tell me?!? She lives about 20 feet down the hall; the least she could have done is walked over to my door, knocked, and asked if I'd already heard about it.
Monday: I finally go to bed a little after 1 am. I didn't get to the store this weekend, and I realize I'm out of conditioner. Great. I'm a little worried about my roommate, and, although my fever is gone, I now have an annoying cough (as in "it's not horrible but I bet it's going to keep me up all night anyways"). I can't get my mind off of homework, however, so as soon as I get into bed my brain starts pestering me about two of the questions on the math assignment. I eventually come up with a solution, which I then test in my head, and, even though it didn't pan out, it was enough mental stimulation that now I'm definitely not getting to sleep for a long while.
Around 4 am, I check the clock again and I wonder when my roommate will get out of the hospital. One thought leads to another, and I end up thinking about my dad. About a month ago I learned that he has esophageal cancer, which has a five year survival rate of 15%. I don't usually get emotional about things, so the full meaning of this still hadn't sunk in yet. Until right at that second, of course. So in addition to all of the other things I can't stop thinking about, I have to contend with the fact that there's a good chance I won't have my dad anymore by the time I get to grad school.
At this point I get up and try to work on this week's lab report for a bit. I'm obviously not going to fall asleep while just lying in bed, and I need to get my mind off of things. I outline the thing and fill in some basic information, then spend ~10 minutes looking at blogs to help get me thinking about something other than homework and illnesses and the like. I also started looking up where my professors' offices are so I can drop off my homework in the morning; I decided if I couldn't fall asleep within the next hour, I'm not going to class. I already only just barely manage to stay awake for my Monday morning classes anyways, so I can only imagine how bad it will be today. What's the point in going if I'm just going to sleep through it?
Fast forward another hour. I'm still not asleep. At this point I say "screw it" and try to think of something, anything that can help me get even 1-2 hours of sleep. I have a chem test on Tuesday and, while I don't really need to study for it, I would appreciate not being a zombie when I take it (remember, I still have most of that other lab report to do today, and I have other commitments until ~6 pm). I've heard that talking about/writing down things that stress you out can help alleviate that stress. And that's why I'm here.
[/rant]
I know my situation probably isn't as bad it seems to me right now, but...yeah. I need sleep.
Also, while checking to see if this post would be appropriate for this thread, I saw that one my favorite authors from when I was younger died earlier this year. This is going to be one of those weeks.