Work. Dance. Tu­tor. Study. Re­peat. Work. Dance. Tu­tor. Study. Re­peat. That was my life for 18 months when I de­cid­ed to ob­tain my mas­ters de­gree via dis­tance learn­ing. I com­fort­ed my­self in the knowl­edge that it would not be for­ev­er and to be hon­est, I was too bad­mind to quit, but there came a point where I re­al­ly thought I was walk­ing a tightrope with re­gards to my men­tal health. Al­though my ed­u­ca­tion was my pri­or­i­ty (mon­ey was not to be spent in vain), all the ac­tiv­i­ties of my lifestyle pri­or to school re­mained part of my day-to-day ac­tiv­i­ties. I was sleep de­prived to say the least, de­pend­ing on ap­prox­i­mate­ly three hours of sleep from day to day.

Sleep is cru­cial for health and well­be­ing as it al­lows our brains to recharge and our bod­ies to feel re­ju­ve­nat­ed. Pro­longed sleep de­fi­cien­cy is not on­ly linked to in­creased risk of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs) like di­a­betes and heart dis­ease but al­so ef­fects on mem­o­ry, mood and even judg­ment. Stress has a di­rect neg­a­tive ef­fect on sleep pat­tern. How­ev­er, there are two types of stress - eu­stress and dis­tress. Both of these en­cour­age the re­lease of cor­ti­sol (stress hor­mone). Eu­stress is con­sid­ered the good stress, the one re­spon­si­ble for that ‘carpe diem’ at­ti­tude. Con­verse­ly, dis­tress is of­ten­times re­ferred to as bad stress, usu­al­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with vary­ing lev­els of anx­i­ety. There­fore, one of the main ef­fects of sleep de­pri­va­tion is the con­tin­u­ous re­lease of the cor­ti­sol from the adren­al glands in times of pro­longed stress. This alone has been linked to men­tal ill­ness.

No mat­ter how much you try, you can­not make up for lost sleep. It was fun to try though. When I com­plet­ed my stud­ies I was elat­ed of course, but I had to take lots of time to read­just. Ini­tial­ly, I felt so un­easy be­ing able to just get home and do any­thing I want­ed, in­clud­ing noth­ing since I was so ac­cus­tomed to work­ing late night to ear­ly morn­ing - some­times falling asleep mid-sen­tence on an as­sign­ment to then get ready to do every­thing all over again the next day. Af­ter all of this, I could fi­nal­ly re­claim that time.

How much sleep is enough though? Many fac­tors af­fect this, in­clud­ing in­di­vid­ual needs and al­so needs of an age group. Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Sleep Foun­da­tion, with re­spect to age, the rec­om­mend­ed sleep pe­ri­od for adults be­tween 25 and 60 years is six to nine hours, sev­en to eight be­ing op­ti­mum. I know right, on­ly in a per­fect world. Based on your lev­el of phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty too (which should be at least mod­er­ate for most, if not all) rest should be high on the list of pri­or­i­ties so that mus­cles have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­build af­ter be­ing used. There al­ways seems to be so much to do and so lit­tle time, but per­haps that’s where fierce­ly con­sis­tent pri­ori­ti­sa­tion would come in.

And now I have a mas­ters de­gree, like many oth­er peo­ple, but the weight of that state­ment holds dif­fer­ent­ly for every­one. The time be­tween com­plet­ing my pro­gramme and grad­u­at­ing was passed be­ing ju­bi­lant, yes, but al­so catch­ing up and be­ing able to whole­heart­ed­ly do things I may have missed out on be­fore. And then there was al­so the time be­tween re­ceiv­ing my cer­tifi­cate and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the com­mence­ment cer­e­mo­ny it­self, so much so, that the fi­nal well of emo­tion over­came me on the ac­tu­al day I would walk across the stage (a mo­ment I can al­ways see re­peat­ed­ly be­cause a dear friend record­ed it for me). Cross­ing that stage rep­re­sent­ed so much for me. All the sleep­less nights, the spare time used to ‘just’ fin­ish this dis­cus­sion or read on that up­com­ing top­ic, the joy of know­ing I was one step clos­er to cre­at­ing the life I imag­ined and de­served based on get­ting clos­er to my pur­pose - I felt it all on that stage - the highs and lows that brought me to that present time, and the grate­ful­ness for all in­volved, but al­so the be­lief I have in my­self and the faith test­ed in God to bring me through it.

You can do all the things, but not all things at the same time. A valu­able take away point is how much I start­ed tak­ing self-care for grant­ed be­cause I just couldn’t seem to make the time for it. Every­thing and every­body else was a pri­or­i­ty. In hind­sight, that was quite an in­jus­tice as I wasn’t my best for any­thing or any­one. Alas, as you learn you grow and I’m def­i­nite­ly thank­ful for the ex­pe­ri­ence not just for what I learnt aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, but al­so what I learnt about my­self in that time and how it has pre­pared me for oth­er sea­sons in my life. So ‘take heart’ and com­fort in the fact that rough times don’t last, per­se­vere and grow through what you go through be­cause at the end of the day we are all con­querors.