Tis the season for baggy eyes, incoherent papers and discombobulated thoughts.

Yes, these are the days during which one ponders why taking 20 credits used to be a neat idea, why on earth one joined so many clubs and when exactly one is supposed to get the recommended sleep and exercise.

Students are cogs in the “we’ve-almost- made-it-to-Thanksgiving-break” mode of class, work, homework, eat, sleep if you’re lucky, class, work, homework.

These are the times when class discussions suddenly morph into theoretical debates about the burdens of our personal lives.

Like when we realize students are really speaking about themselves instead of a character in a children’s literature novel, for example.

Somehow talking and walking wind-up toys don’t seem so difficult to relate to because of the steamroller driving forces behind students.

Now is the point of the semester where we could have sworn midterms were supposed to be over weeks ago.

And how we think we finally made it through the last hectic week before finals — that is, until we look at our schedule books and realize we were simply delusional.

Sleep almost becomes like candy at a check-out line.

Once you get some, you can’t live without it and if you don’t have any, you learn to survive.

Students begin to develop pseudo states of sleep in which fantasizing about sleep takes over in class, at work, during conversations and at almost any other time when undivided attention is required.

Sleep also becomes a word with new meaning because it can sneak up on you when you least expect it.

Many students get so little real sleep that there should be a category on resumes detailing how little sleep the candidate gets and how much of a load they are able to take on.

Of course, if the company were anything like my mother, they might not appreciate the idea because the response would be that not getting sleep is only a result of poor time management.

But what is time management exactly when there is so little time to manage everything?

And if you add personal relationships into the recipe of the crazed student’s life, sheer chaos can be the result. Roommates, when they aren’t trying to complete their own thousands of tasks, can commiserate with the toll the abundance of work takes.

And isn’t it amazing how a simple gesture like offering to pay for the nightly jolt of caffeine for your significant other leads to arguments of the struggles of women, or men for that matter?

But never fear because Thanksgiving break is almost here!

In fact, give a little thanks because soon the only things we’ll be able to complain about are whether or not we should have had that extra serving of yams … and corn, potatoes, cranberries and pumpkin pie.

We’ll be able to sleep for as long as we want. We’ll be able to get healthy amounts of sleep.

We could even sleep for a whole day.

There are so many possibilities for fulfilling the human needs that are neglected while spending so much time writing papers and reading hundreds of mundane textbook pages.

Over break, I recommend sharing back- rubs, writing a love poem, thinking about your future in a healthy non-stressful way and laughing because it is so easy to forget about what makes us happy beyond grades and school awards.

It’s important to remember that we are “gentle humans,” as Iowa State Assistant Professor Laurie Sanda always says.

So let’s treat ourselves in gentle ways.

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Kathleen Carlson is a senior in journalism and mass communication and international studies from Cedar Rapids.