It’s that time of year again — the mid-semester blues.

You are overloaded with tests, papers and projects after midterms, basketball season excitement is next week, Thanksgiving is around the corner and the weather is changing every five minutes.

The long-awaited Thanksgiving break is more than two weeks away. It’s almost there, but not yet.

So in the meantime, you find yourself struggling in class. Struggling to stay awake, that is.

Some of us have been the fascinated spectators of our peers falling asleep during a lecture, especially a slow one.

The empty gaze seen in the eyes of some gradually disappears when all you see are the eyelids.

Then there are the head bobbers who entertain us with their choreography. From a distance, their sporadic head motions could be from the headphone music. And it may be, only when you realize there are no headphones on the ears.

The most amazing characteristic of some of these sleepy heads is that they will sit in the first few rows of class.

Some professors tolerate this, especially when a class responds with a significant number of blank stares. For those who can’t stand sleeping students, it’s an opportunity to proclaim power in a class that students wake up to, but respond very little to.

However fun it is to watch others nod off, it’s embarrassing to be the object of the entertainment.

Some of us, fortunately, are lucky enough to have a few concerned peers in our classes. Consider a few of them our friends, especially when they loudly whisper, “Wake up!” halfway across the room.

But besides the nudges on the side, the loud whispers and the music blaring from headphones, students have done other things to keep themselves and their classmates awake.

Earlier this week, a friend was sitting behind me in one of my classes chomping on a piece of gum in my ear. I could have fallen asleep to the soothing voice of the professor, but those chomping jaws kept me awake. There are students who wake themselves up. They are quite rare, but they are just as important.

These students fall asleep before letting out a small yelp in class when they awake. They are amazed by their sleepiness just as their classmates are amazed by their awakening.

Usually, students doze off in class without realizing it. But when they take notes while dozing off, students might as well be writing a foreign language. These notes look like your version of preschool handwriting with slanted lines going down the page.

When you do come back to reality, you realize you have missed 10 minutes of notes.

Here’s a suggestion.

To keep track of how much you’ve missed, record the time before you mentally leave the lecture and record the time when you come back to it.

If that’s too hard, then just record the time every five to 10 minutes.

In all seriousness, staying awake in class can be challenging. No one means to fall asleep during a lecture.

However, most of us don’t get eight hours of sleep and don’t nap during the day. Some of us don’t consume the recommended allowance of vitamins and minerals. Instead, we live on a variety of junk foods.

However, if the caffeine or the gum doesn’t work, then doodle or make pretty pictures in your notebook. Do a caricature sketch of your professor or bring a toy.

It doesn’t have to be a fancy one. Computer paper will even do. Tear the ends off a piece of computer paper, roll them into a ball and entertain yourself.

After all, it may be the only thing keeping you awake in class before a test.

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Shuva Rahim is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Davenport.