For someone who has quite a lot of trouble sleeping, I want to be asleep a surprising amount of the time I am awake.
Most days, particularly in winter, I can think of nothing more appealing than curling up in my bed and sleeping for three hours in the mid afternoon.
When I finish my morning shift at the library all I want to do is go straight home so I can get into bed and catch up four hours of sleep.
And when I wake up in the mornings it is a constant battle against my seven alarms.
My sleepy brain is powerful and it is always telling me that if I just hit snooze on my alarm then I can keep sleeping for a little bit longer and it won't really matter if I'm late or if I don't get up until noon. Sleeping is nice.
It feels amazing and I'm not even sure why.
Probably it's much the same as procrastination.
You get a small thrill every time you do something that isn't what you are supposed to be doing, the same as you get a small thrill realising that you could without any serious consequence still be sleeping.
Sleeping is more appealing than ever to me at the moment.
I'm supposed to be working on huge assignments and writing my dissertation while most other students are on holiday.
I've been trying (largely in vain) to get to the library in the morning and work until six o'clock in the evening every day.
But it seems not even the threat of not finishing my dissertation can stop me from procrastinating.
The problem is I feel an overwhelming sense of shame when I actively do something other than studying.
I've pretty much perfected reading academic articles that say essentially the same thing as the 12 other articles I've read on the same topic and telling myself that I am doing work with a purpose.
I've even decided that rereading Ulysses is important and it's ultimately going to be helpful when it almost definitely is not.
What I can't do is go out for coffee, watch TV, surf the web, pursue my hobbies and passions. But I can sleep.
When I wake up and want to go back to sleep it is very, very easy to tell myself that obviously I need the sleep and that's why I am having trouble waking up.
Maybe I do need the sleep, maybe I can't wake up easily because my flat is freezing and my room hasn't caught any sun in weeks.
Maybe it's because I know that if I get up I will have to take a shower and that will involve taking my clothes off in the freezing cold bathroom where the window never shuts properly and the shower has two options: scalding hot dribble or lukewarm stream.
Mostly, I think I'm not getting up because the thought of sitting in the library for nine hours panicking about how I haven't read all of the criticism ever written on Djuna Barnes is far less appealing than having strange and vivid dreams about One Direction.
I sometimes wonder if there are actually people who find getting up in the morning easy, or if everyone else just has greater self-control than I do and is capable of forcing themselves out of bed even if they don't want to.
Both these kinds of people exist, definitely.
Perhaps there is some chance that when my dissertation is finished I will become one of these people because I will have finally learnt (under immense pressure) how to get out of my bed and get things done.
Millie Lovelock is a Dunedin student.
