<p>seriously guys, you cant really expect to get a lot of sleep when going to Caltech. Sure you can manage your time..blah blah blah. But if its 2 am, youve been working since 7 pm, and your friends want to go throw someone into the pool, then arent you going to go? </p>
<p>caltechs hard. youll lose sleep. but we're doing it...so if you want to come here, you have to deal with it too. you just have to remind yourself its worth it</p>
<p>I slept once. It was nice.</p>
<p>Well, here's my personal experience: I'd say I get more often than not about 7 hours of sleep. But because I'm such a procrastinator (which I highly don't recommend unless you're an expert at it), I usually end up with many nights every term where I just don't sleep and have to work all night.</p>
<p>On another note, many people at Tech can get their sleep schedule really messed up, and that actually happened to me for a while. So, if anything, I strongly recommend you try waking up at roughly the same time every day.</p>
<p>"Wow. Other techers get a whole lot more sleep than me. I have had numerous classes that required me to get 1-2 hours of sleep on a weekly basis. I often go a week or more without a full night's sleep. During the week, I never get more than six hours. Then, I try to make up for it on weekends. If you go to Caltech, you are going to have four years of sleep deprivation -- and you will probably lose any grip on sanity. Slashing your wrists is more fun than surviving Caltech. Come here only if you love pain."</p>
<p>Ellen what's your major and how many units are you taking? That sounds pretty harsh, even for a techer. Do you have a lot of responsibilities outside of academics? Sports, clubs, committees?</p>
<p>You can get a reasonable amount of sleep if you don't go to your classes and don't really do much work or anything. I sleep from about 4am - 1pm every day; and I have never gone to any morning classes (but then, most of them aren't really worth going to anyway as the profs suck at teaching). The point is, if sleep is important to you, then you will get plenty of sleep.</p>
<p>whoa whoa whoa. ellen146 strikes me as too bitter to exist. if she isn't, i have never met any techers who feel the way she does. tech isn't this hard unless you insist on making that hard for yourself, and then you can always dial it back.</p>
<p>spoon! -- your evaluation of the morning-class profs' quality is apparently hearsay... according to your self-reported schedule, you wouldn't recognize one if he brained you with an oscilliscope. ;-)</p>
<p>p.s. i go to my classes, do a lot of work, read good books and the poetry of a.e. housman, and STILL get 7 hours a night most nights. so it's not like a do-things vs. sleep dilemma here :-P</p>
<p>Sleep definitely depends on study habits. Last year (when I was a freshman) I got very little sleep. This year is harder, but I screwed around less and I now get more than 7 hours almost every night.</p>
<p>omg, it's my birthday buddy!</p>
<p>addressing the classes issue, go to your classes! yes, even the morning ones. Most classes are worth going to. Some of the core classes really aren't, though. But you should at least go the first couple weeks to make sure you're not missing anything crucial and that it really would be a waste of your time attending.</p>
<p>Well, I sometimes view this site to see what others I know are telling people about Caltech. I guess breaking my silence was enough to get criticized for acknowledging that there is a faction of extremely bitter techers.</p>
<p>I do in fact exist -- I'm in physics which is definitely not an easy option but I have gotten by on an average number of units (40ish) per term and not the insane number that a major like ChE requires. There are some people at Caltech that are much brighter than others and can do their work much faster without talking over any problems with others. I am not one of these people. Yes, I like to have a bit of fun every now and then but not excessively (I am usually at my desk for on weekend nights). However, the consequences of taking a day or two to get over a severe illness or see your family for thanksgiving can be a lower GPA. Similarly, a poorly taught class may not be worth attending if it mean gaining another hour of sleep or another hour of working time -- sometimes classes must be sacrificed just so you can make it to the end of the week without collapsing.</p>
<p>Caltech is not a place for fun. It is a place for work. Yes, you get amazing experience in science and meet wonderful people. But, this place also breaks a lot of people. The number of techers who graduate from here turned off to math and science for the rest of their lives is not an insignificant one. I am fortunately not one of the many people I know who have turned to therapy and anti-depressants to handle the pressure and the pain of a Caltech education.</p>
<p>Your experience may be better than mine -- you may find this school to be perfect. The bitter and unhappy are plentiful if you wish to hear from them. The reality of Caltech is that both extremes exist academically, there are geniuses here that get through their work in a flash and there are people who struggle through each assignment knowing that they are here because it is a unique opportunity and it is important to try to absorb the lessons of Caltech. If I had known what I know now about science and research, I may have gone to another university. However, I could never have gotten this same knowledge and experience anywhere else so despite the pain Caltech has been worthwhile to me. I'm not saying that Caltech can't be worthwhile but you have to be prepared to lose yourself in this pursuit and know that you would not be alone in your struggle to just survive until graduation day.</p>
<p>It's definitely true that when you come to prefrosh weekend, you should seek out the bitter and unhappy people just as much as the bushy-tailed and happy people, to get a balanced picture.</p>
<p>It is true that a nontrivial number of people find that their original intended major is not their cup of tea. As our resident economist Not quite old likes to point out, this can be viewed as a significant plus. At an easy state school, any Techer could perform very well in physics and might decide to go to graduate school, only to realize that, in truth, the competition is tough and the work can be nearly impossible. It may be better to learn the truth about the top end of your chosen discipline early and direct your life accordingly.</p>
<p>It should be pointed out, also, that Caltech never locks anyone into being unhappy. Core is quite hard but manageable, and if trying to be a physics or ChemE major takes too much of a mental toll beyond that, one can switch into, say, the Business Economics and Management major, to pick a random example, which is much more reasonable (and seems to be quite highly regarded, if the industry response to the first batch of graduates is any indication.)</p>
<p>Sure, some people might not like to abandon their first love, but then I'd say the misery is a continuous choice, not an unfortunate circumstance. Switching majors can often be a much less drastic cure than therapy and antidepressants. So do keep in mind that there are ways out (while still staying at Caltech), and nobody is ever locked into a superhard major they find unpleasant.</p>
<hr>
<p>ellen -- please forgive the concerns i raised about your ontological standing. i just thought the "slit your wrists" business was kind of absurdly hyperbolic, so much so that it might have been some troll who hates caltech and wants to scare prefrosh for fun. i am all for real students sharing their experiences, so i'm sorry to have been skeptical.</p>
<p>Ellen,</p>
<p>Seeing as how I've spent the morning advising bitter and unhappy econ majors in my department I feel like this is a good time to chime in. ["How could grad school be so HARD? I got straight A's in college!"]</p>
<p>I was often an unhappy physics major at Tech. If I could go back in time and advise my dumb teenage self, I would say -- Switch Majors. I liked AMA (AcM?) much better but stuck it out in Physics out of pride. Pfft.. Senior year was mostly a waste of my time because I went to PhD school in Econ. I can't tell you how much time frosh/sophs wasted agonizing over staying in Track B (the theoretical track where lots of F's were handed out). Even though I hated it, I stuck it out in Track B till middle of sophomore year when I overheard our prof in the cafeteria telling a visiting buddy from Harvard "Here we have two levels of physics: The Very Difficult and the Impossible." For some people, even switching universities may be the correct answer.</p>
<p>You [I address this to all students and prospectives] also have to be honest with yourself. Do you want to find out what you really want to do -- against realistic 1st tier competition -- or do you just want a good GPA? </p>
<p>It's also useful to learn that there's more to success than raw brilliance. In my grad school the best guy in class was a true mathematical whiz. Unbelievable. Highest scores in all the first year courses. But after prelims he drifted. He couldn't make the switch from doing well on tests to coming up with original research ideas on his own. So he left with a Master's.</p>
<p>I remember having lunch with Vernon Smith (Nobel Prize) and we reminisced a bit about Tech. He said, "After Tech, Harvard seemed a lot easier." [He is also reputed to have said, when asked why he took a job at Arizona when turning down a first tier department "Any school I'm at is first-rate."]</p>
<p>So this may be cold comfort for someone struggling to keep a B average. But I gotta tell you, it's better than getting an easy 4.0 before going to a tough grad school and then getting blown out of the water in your twenties. And LOTS of the massively burned out Techers I knew still went on to do well in life. Several of the dropouts are even quite rich and benefitted from their Tech contacts. But no guarantees. Ever.</p>
<p>Hmm. Isn't long-term sleep deprivation bad for brain and body? There are studies suggesting that sleep deprivation raises cortisol levels and that chronic elevated cortisol levels result in decreased temporal lobe size as measured by MRI and impairment in spatial memory resulting from cell loss in the hippocampus. Elevated cortisol is also a risk factor for diabetes and correlates with increased body mass index. Seven hours is probably not that bad, but one or two seems like it would be pushing the limits of what's good for you...not that I've actually been paying much attention to ensuring proper sleep hygiene myself..</p>
<p>simonster, is that all really true? About the cortisol levels…</p>
<p>SayWhat?~ You’re replying to a thread from 2006, so I wouldn’t really expect an answer.</p>