Dave's Rule of Street Survival
Speak softly and own a big, mean Doberman.

48 hours without sleep.
24 hours without food.

No.
I am not living in a desert with no food, no water and no sleep.

It is what grad school can do to you.
Especially at the end of the semester.

This saga started on the morning of Wednesday. When I realised I had a lot to do before the project submission on Friday at 5 pm.
So the full nite out on Wednesday nite, and did a lot of work. But not enough.
And I could not sleep on the day of Thursday as had a 3 hour of TA session, spread over the day as 3 one hour sessions.

The lack of sleep on Wednesday nite also caused a really funny situation. There was this class at 11 am on Thursday. I went to the class. Was half asleep and half listening. Suddenly I opened my eyes to find the entire class empty, the professor packing her laptop and waking me up. And for a moment, I was wondering what was happening. Then I sheepishly apologised to the prof and explained that I didnt get enough sleep.

The worst is yet to come.

I continued working on Thursday nite, running hour long simulations and writing the report at the same time. It continued till 8 am on Friday morning. And I couldnt stay awake anymore. I had reached my concentration limit. So I just left for home. I hoped to catch an hour nap and then go back to work on it more and then do TA work starting at 2 pm. And with that end, I kept 4 alarms staggered by 5 minutes each for 9:30 am.

All I remember next is a call from my friend who seemed to be very frantically looking for me. And he said that he had submitted his project. I asked him why he did it so early. The reply he gave that it was half hour to 5 gave me the shock of my life. I saw my mobile - it had 20 missed calls. And 3 were from the prof of the course of which I am the TA.

I called up the professor and explained that I could not come in early. And I apologised profusely that I had not slept for 2 days. He, thankfully, accepted it and asked me to come and suprevise the closing of the lab. Which I did.

I then called up my project partners (whose calls amounted to 15 of the 19 missed calls), who said that they did most of the work and had managed to submit it.
And only at that time did I encounter relief.

And only after reaching home, did I have dinner - at 8 pm. 24 hours after Thursday's dinner.

Things did work out well at the end. But I still feel guilty about it. Something that I will not forget for a while.

Moral of the story: If you want to work a lot, make sure that you sleep only two hours a day - dont avoid sleep altogether.

To culminate the wonderful end of Fall '04 classes, I went around to the LANCAVE and played Halo for an hour and a half.
Followed by Half life 2 for an hour. (10$ usefully wasted)

And then went around clicking photos with my camera.

And I am in love with it.