I have been on the go since Monday. On the go meaning that almost all of my time has been scheduled away, taken out of my hands. Monday I had class, then I had to write a couple of short papers, then I had another (very long) class. Tuesday I had two classes, then I studied at Lisa's Cafe before heading to the fancy Domain Dinner that I was guilt-tripped into attending, and from there I went straight to my in-progress swing dance lesson. Wednesday I had class, then I worked on poli sci stuff all afternoon, and then I had an RCB meeting in the evening. This morning it took every ounce of willpower I had (and a looming midterm paper assignment) to pull myself out of bed for my first class of the day.

I'm not sure why I really bother going to my Islam Studies class. On occasion the professor takes attendance, which counts toward part of the grade, but I'm sure he must have seen me fall asleep several times during today's lecture. For the past several classes it has been a great struggle staying awake. Not only is the material kind of dull, I just don't get enough sleep. It's not so much that I have too much to do -- rather, I often don't feel like sleeping at night (I only feel like that all day). By the time 2 a.m. rolls around, I've worked and socialized and Web surfed for so long that I'm finally truly awake. At that point it seems like no problem to stay up until 3 or 4. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

At any rate, I've taken to drifting off in my Islam class. It's strange, since I really do find religion to be an interesting subject in general (I sometimes even check out Beliefnet to read about what different religions teach). However, this class is less about Islam than about mysticism, specifically Sufism. The mystical tradition doesn't have the same appeal to me as the theological tradition. To me, theology is like a good logic puzzle -- sort of analytical like a geometry proof -- whereas mysticism is like grade school literature class -- how does the story make you feel? (I always thought the questions in our literature textbooks were full of crap.) That's not to say mysticism has no value -- it just doesn't challenge my mind as much. (Except when I'm trying to figure out what al-Ghazali's actually saying, but mostly that's just boring.)

It's like my theology classes in high school. I really liked my freshman year class, where we took an analytical look at the Hebrew Scriptures. The textbook they gave us was actually insightful, and I learned a whole new way of looking at the Bible. That made it all the more disappointing the next year when our class on the Christian Scriptures was a whole lot of "Jesus loves you!" Not that I'm denying that, but after doing so much critical textual analysis it was hard to accept nothing more than expounding upon "Love your neighbor as yourself."

It's the same way now. There's only so many times I can hear "There is no god but God," and "There is no reality but God," before it really puts me to sleep. Britt might remember this method of sleeping from our fall quarter History of Modern Japan class. My eyes start to close, my head droops, and for a few seconds I'm completely unconscious, then -- UP! I remember where I am and jerk myself awake. But it doesn't last -- half a minute later my head falls again, and the process continues like this for however long the class lasts. Unlike in history class, though, I can't give up, slump behind the row in front of me and just sleep the whole time.

Nonetheless, I don't remember anything the prof said in the last half of my Islam class this morning. I'm not kidding when I say I go unconscious -- I honestly get the same feeling of complete zoning out that I got when I fainted at work the day after my Thanksgiving food poisoning. I feel all warm and rested, and my mind is floating away somewhere, and more than anything I don't want to get up -- until I realize, wait, I'm not supposed to be doing this! Then I wake up confused, having completely missed what happened in the past couple of minutes (or God knows how long) and still not quite catching what's happening at the moment. But it doesn't matter since presently I'll fall asleep again.