It was my first day in the institute, and I was resolved to socialize. Each was quirkier than the previous, and I thought, “Maybe all IITians are eccentric”. Not long after, I met my seniors, and became a slightly-unwilling participant of the infamous “nameless-shameless” intro. Nothing outlandish happened though. Just as I was sighing in relief about the relative normality of this new world(a rookie mistake), I was handed…a smartwatch. It seemed redundant, considering I already had a favorite watch, but I zipped my mouth and decided to inspect it closer. The watch itself was pale grey, dull as a cloudy day. However, there was something new on the home screen: a battery meter adorned with the sun and moon symbols at the top and the bottom of the meter. I had no idea, at that moment, as to the consequences of that night.
The explanation that followed was so absurd that I thought it was an elaborate prank designed to test our naivete. The watch worked on the basis of sleep, recharging as we sleep, and draining as we stayed awake. The conversion, the senior explained, was that for every hour spent asleep, the battery charged by 2% and for every three hours awake, it drained by 2%.
Initially, I lived like the living example of my mother’s parenting success, and so I thought to myself, “This thing’s useless”. But then the clock in the watch ticked, and like a frog being boiled alive (but with Netflix, not water), my transformation began. The culprits were numerous and alluring. Late night rendezvous, another episode of my favorite web-series (definitely the last for now), the change of my insta reel feed at 2am (internet is surprisingly fast midnight), walks searching for food like a nocturnal animal…Soon, I was going to bed at 1 AM regularly while maintaining the delusion that 8 AM classes were manageable (bunking, back then, wasn’t an option). And so, the battery began its steady, inevitable decline, like my parents’ faith in my decision-making abilities.
“Five hours of sleep? That’s plenty”, I told myself, conveniently ignoring the fact that even 8 hours of sleep at home had me waking like a zombie most mornings. The routine continued, until one day I reached 2% and it force-shut me. Like Windows XP, I crashed mid paper and pity me, that was during PH1010 Midsem. “Maybe I shouldn’t have stayed up that late at night and studied”, I thought to myself after waking up at 2pm. Thank heavens that I was almost done with my midsem paper by the time I crashed. I rushed to my chem lab cursing the sleep battery, but my stomach kept rumbling and I was just wondering how life would have been had I also had a food battery.
If not for the sleep battery I would have pulled an all-nighter without a scoff, and here I was, suffering due to forgoing just 2 hours of sleep. That’s when reality hit me in the face regarding my unsustainable sleeping habits. With this unearthed wisdom and fear, a reform was needed. After an intense thinking session, I decided to approach sleep like a strategic resource in a video game.
Quiz 2 week came and I executed my master plan: Strategic Sleep Deprivation. And by some miracle (or possibly divine intervention from the God of Academic Procrastination), the strategy worked like a charm, and my marks soared. My mastery of the Min Max Optimization of sleep made me very happy. I felt like Tony Stark of sleep management. But what even is Tony Stark without a little adventure. My quiz 2 victory gave me enough confidence (arrogance) and FOMO on the innumerable late night activities began to bug me.
That led to the birth of ‘Operation Catnap’ – sleeping in classes that I deemed non-beneficial (which let’s be honest, was most of them). The benefits, it seemed to me, were enormous: binge watching the latest series on Netflix, midnight PoR meetings, attending first show movies – with no chance for sleep deprivation. And my comp team friends loved it the most. What pleasure it was to leave for PoRs at night and pull the work through midnight (when it could ideally be started earlier)! I even planned a long weekend where I accumulated enough charge to binge watch Stranger Things – I tragically missed due to JEE preparation while my sister taunted me. Revenge is best served with popcorn and a fully charged sleep battery.
Endsems arrived with all the grace of Ares banging his shield: Back-to-back exams, some with the sadistic timing of afternoon to next morning combinations. I was lethargic, and with my quiz 2 results clear on my mind, I slept for days, accumulating sleep credits like a financial advisor preparing for retirement. And for five days consecutively, sleep and I became sworn enemies. There was no option though, considering the unintended consequences of Operation Catnap showed up.
But on the night before my CY1001 exam, my body decided to file a formal complaint, and I felt sicker than ever. “Maybe my body is just rejecting Chemistry as a subject”, I thought, desperately trying to maintain my delusions. Sure enough, the red “3%” glared at me from the watch. I’ve heard of “being stuck between a rock and a hard place” but this was my first time experiencing it (not recommended). My options were brutal:
- Continue at current pace and shutdown
- Sleep now to charge enough to just survive the exam
My state of preparedness was questionable at best, and my Panic level : MAXIMUM. With no actual option, the only thing I could do was sleep, and curse the senior that gave me that watch. The exam was as easy as playing chess for fun. Like, who even does that?!
I chanced upon the realization that the watches weren’t made to help us pull all nighters when we wanted to, but rather to ensure enough sleep. The message was somehow lost – to time, to the evolving traditions, the mindset. The forced shutdown during my exams wasn’t a malfunction but an intervention by the body. People posting stories captioned, ‘My Sleep Battery at the end of Quiz week😴💀’ with dramatic screenshots of their 3% battery levels, flexing their low batteries and how they pulled all-nighters for their project (we all know who the main contributor is), messed up eating schedules due to days of sleeping. The list goes on and on.
Granted, it wasn’t all bad. Like, profs wondering if it’s really true that there’s a sleep battery and that’s why so many students sleep in their class, the extra preparation during exams, harmless fun once in a while. I vowed to myself, as my first semester ended, to think about the consequences of my actions. I even changed my Whatsapp “About” to “There are no free lunches”. (My abuse of the sleep battery during the semester break was very much justified!).
PS: This was a story where Red Bull and Monster were officially replaced with sleep (Like diamonds cut diamonds, shouldn’t only sleep be replacing sleep?). And sometimes, the most rebellious thing you can do isn’t staying up all night but going to bed when there’s so much work left.
written by :- Shri Prathaa M
edited by :- C. Siddu Sriram
designed by :- Harshit Gautam
