Are you feeling sleepy yet?

Today I found myself almost unable to control my dozing during my early morning classes.  It was a struggle to keep my eyes from drooping as my professor went on about the differences between mean and median.  Having the covered the information before in middle school, my sense of focus was severely limited.

While this may seem the every day experience for many college students, I found myself mentally drifting into a train of thought composed of how tired I am and how I can get more sleep when really I need to be spending so much more time studying.

No matter how much coffee I have, I sometimes end up like this.

I've often wondered about the healthy balance between sleep and pulling those late nights to cram for an impossible test.  But because of a little good luck and some diligent hard work, I'll finally get to find out.

In other words, I'm currently serving as an RA (research assistant) for Professor Schnyer of the Psychology Department here at UT.  I found out about the opportunity last fall but only this spring have had the chance to really get my feet wet.

The current project I'm focused on is called the chronic sleep restriction study.  I'll be tracking 10 participants through the semester by measuring the amount of sleep they get each night and comparing it to cognitive functioning.  I really ought not to say anymore in case there's someone reading this who'd like to participate.  Can't skew the data after all.

But really I'm just so thrilled to be doing real research and getting real hands-on experience.  As the only RA involved with this particular study, I'm taking the lion's share of the work.  I've become acquainted with EEG (electroencephalogram- which measures brain waves off the surface of your scalp) protocols and soon I'll be moving on to the actual data processing portion.  I find it absolutely astounding to be doing real research and not some monotonous, lackey's task.

We use a more modern EEG but this particular readout is
showing the alpha wavs which occur right before sleep
(or when you're drowsy).

And for all those UT students out there who worry about the future, I have some simple advice to give.  Go out and seek opportunities in the areas you're interested in.  The fact that we attend such a big school just means there's even more variety and opportunities to discover.  And if you end up finding what you're doing isn't your passion, at least you got to find out early on.  I can't stress enough how getting actual experience outside of class is important!  It's more applicable to what you'll actually be doing in the future and will impress future employers to give us that leg up in life.