After a few weeks at home, many of us start to miss Madison over break. I laid awake at night""literally unable to sleep. It was not the absence of my alma mater I yearned for, but the exquisite 20-inch TV set in my Madison apartment bedroom. The white noise was driving me crazy.
I did not watch that much TV growing up. However, I found that the pleasant cantor of late night TV, with its pixilated Northern Lights dancing across my ceiling, was the perfect way to drift off after a busy day of exams and papers.
Four years later""I cannot fall asleep without it. It is my grown up version of a childhood bedside story. Instead of my dad telling me the mischievous mishaps of Goldilocks, I'm watching meth addicts get busted on COPS"" at 1:00 a.m. It's also easier to wake up when you have Al Roker telling you to get up and smell the sunshine.
Fortunately, my teddy bear also needs the TV on to fall asleep, or I would be in a real fix. My bedtime addiction only becomes a problem when I go home for the holidays. Without the distraction of TV, thoughts go racing through my brain a mile a minute.
Did I let the dog out? How do I even begin my job search? Did I remember to hand in all my final papers?
This goes on and on every night until the wee hours of the morning when the sounds of my thoughts are 10 times louder than the sounds of the TV I miss.
I found myself going downstairs to the living room couch""which is hardly comfortable enough to sit on""and sleeping with the TV on until my parents woke up at about 5:30 a.m. I was averaging at most four hours of sleep per night.
Although I was losing sleep, and developing a wicked dependence on caffeine, I thought my time at home might be a good reason to get rid of my bad habit.
I assumed it was unhealthy. However, when I talked to sleep experts at UW-Madison, I found it was more normal than I thought.
My feelings of anxiety are apparently felt by countless students throughout campus who solve the problem in the same way""turning on the TV to have something else to think about besides grades and the like.
Obviously if you have insomnia or wake up when a pin drops, it's probably not a good idea to try my method. However, if you find yourself unable to fall asleep just like me""I recommend you try it for a week.
Set the sleep timer for an hour or so and let the screams of hillbillies running from the police lull you into dreamland.
