This semester I have blessed myself with five wonderful days of 8 AM each week. I know it sounds like a curse, but call me crazy – I do enjoy the longer days. We all know if I didn’t have a class until 11 AM I would be rolling out of bed at 10:30 AM. The downside is the rather tired and disoriented state that in which I arrive to my first classes of the day. This morning was especially bad but did lead to an intriguing discussion with my housemate David as we strolled to our 8 o’clock Controls class.

Being engineers, we timed the walk from the IFC house to the Engineering building at approximately eight minutes. As you know, every second prior to 8 AM is worth its weight in gold (so to speak – I realize that seconds do not posses any intrinsic weight). We usually leave the house around 7:50 AM in order to arrive just as the professor begins lecture. During today’s walk, we began to investigate the possibilities of researching the applications of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity as related to the trip between our beds and our seats in the classroom such as to maximize the available sleep time. The benefits would be vast; not only would I be able to wake up at 8:30 AM, shower, eat breakfast, read the morning newspaper, make a new post on the website, and then arrive at class precisely at 7:55 AM, but I could probably score a Nobel prize, invent the negative resistor, stay out all night while still getting an average of 8.5 hours of sleep every day, complete all my homework thirty seconds before going to class, and drive to Louisiana before you make it back to your dorm.

But let us dream. It’s still to early in the morning… by the time I can actually think clearly on this matter, I’ll have forgotten the whole thing.