Sleep. It is one of the most integral parts of our lives; studies have shown that we sleep for 1/3 of our lives. I don’t know where those studies get their data from, because honestly, here at Penn, I sleep maybe five hours out of every day. Those stats don’t add up. As a matter of fact, my little story begins after a long night of work.

So I wake up after this long night (I’m a dork—I know), tired as hell and really just kind of wanting to fall back asleep in my nice warm bed. But of course, on this wonderful Friday morning, oh-so-close to the weekend, but just not close enough, I had to go to my Brain and Behavior class.

Luckily, I like this class. I wake up early to see my professor’s crazy antics and mini-photo montages of his cat jumping at us (if anyone has seen Dr. Kaplan’s pre-lecture monologues, you know what I am talking about and have enjoyed it just as much). But on this particular morning, Dr. Kaplan wasn’t there. We had a guest lecturer to talk about—surprise!—sleep.

It was a good lecture. Nothing special. But before I left the class, it hit me. I love sleep. Many who know me are probably thinking: “No shit!” I’m the kid who sleeps through every Quad fire alarm and every giant thunderstorm. It takes my roommate punching me in the kidneys just to get me to shut off my alarm in the morning. But I never really thought about how amazing it was. What is sleep to me? Sleep is the only place where I can escape from the world. Sleep is the only place where I can dream. Sleep is the only place where I can get away with walking into the Cowboys’ cheerleaders’ locker-room without a problem. Sleep is like a vacation. It’s a chance for the body to regenerate; to consolidate the memories of the past day. We are all like batteries that run out sometime—deprived from sleep we’d all be crazed lunatics.

In that class and elsewhere, I learned a few interesting tidbits about sleep. It is divided up into two basic cycles: slow-wave and REM sleep. During REM sleep our brains are just as active as they are when we are awake. That’s a good thing, because then my dad can’t tell me I’m being lazy and inactive when I sleep the summer away. Another cool factoid is that dolphins are never fully asleep —they only shut off half of their brains at any one time — that’s just freaking awesome. The last little thing about sleep that I found pretty cool was that the extra hour of sleep received when clocks are put back at the start of daylight savings in Canada has been found to coincide with a fall in the number of road accidents. There’s an argument for starting the day an hour later if I ever heard one — score one for sleep.

I used to wonder how bears and hippies could go into hibernation all winter. How could they miss out on all the fun? Now I kind of agree with them. Sleep is the way to go, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I know it sounds kind of weird that I am writing an entire article about sleep, but as our last issue of the year, I thought I would write about something I learned here at Penn my first year, something that I thought I would share with all of you: sleep is the most important asset we have been given. Take it every chance you can get it. While some may say that “you can sleep when you die,” I say that “if you don’t sleep you will die.” Even as I write this article at 3 a.m., sleep is all I really want.

So, after making this realization in class, I looked around me to see if everyone else was as amazed by the subject matter as I was, coming to the same conclusion. But then I realized, everyone was asleep. Good for them. They’re catching on.