After completing a month of work contract that ended in an unexpected bitter way, I have been spending most of the time sleeping - typically about 9 to 10 hours per day, from my bed to sofa, chair, and floor. When I finally got to move my ass again for chauffeur (= designated driver, 대리운전) shifts I suddenly thought about my school days and 'the combat' with sleeping.
I think during my 2nd to 3rd grade, sleeping late or staying up all night became something to brag about. I guess pulling a late night was seen as an ability and a strength, directly related to one's physical power. Such 'trend' made me end up be happy about staying up later than 2AM and waking up just at about 7:15AM, but for then, it wasn't a stress matter - rather, I was happy (while in thrill-like anxiety) to secretly play web games and read comic books to past midnight to usually up to 2AM, and then talk about my sleep time and what I did at the class.
As soon as I reached 4th grade, my nighttime changed dramatically. Now I had to start preparing for grades and middle-high school educations just like many other Seoul, and especially Gangnam, students. Visiting hagwons after school became 'mandatory', which have their own set of courses and tests from school and from each other. Staying up until late at night was now expected.
From then I had to deal with assignments and prepping pop quizzes from both school and hagwon, physical punishments at school and open humiliations from hagwon teachers and students due to my pathetic grades and personality disorders I (and anyone) had no idea about, and usually hitting 12AM when I could say I'm "almost done" with the given works. And my stress was ignored by other students having far more strenuous schedules and domestic abuses that we took too lightly.
Around middle school and high school period, some of my school and hagwon teachers gave speeches about how we should combat our physical selves, from our wants of "go outside, play games" to our sleeping needs, so we can successfully get into the top tier Korean universities and then fully enjoy those wants and needs.
Whenever I think about these words and the moments again, I am creeped out not only by the teachers but also to myself who desperately tried to follow these words. Everyday I would strain myself to school library or a nearby cafe up to 10PM, then continue working on assignments and/or study for exams until I hit about 3AM mark. As a result of the strenuous schedule I had very hard time following with, my grades fluctuated very dramatically and I had an extra stress of trying to stay awake while taking tests. I snapped after my high school's 1st semester finals, when I failed at a math test just because I didn't sleep well the day before and so I couldn't solve the questions with eyelids failing to open.
After that event, I transferred to a different high school, which thankfully I was a lot more appreciated and was able to do activities for my interests' sake than just for grades. But even by then and to this date, I feel that such appreciation comes from my efforts and anxiety to "combat" sleeping - having a 3 to 6 hours of sleeping time schedule throughout the high school days (until covid) and occasionally staying up all night, having coffee as my almost only source of hydration for time to time, and feeling like I committed a serious crime for whenever I slept over 7 hours for any day.
I wonder if a lot of my current personality instabilities and anxieties could be resolved by getting comfortable with long sleeps. But at the same time I don't know if I can even be comfortable with sleeping, when for 2/3 of a year I have to stay up through nights for works and studying, and for the vacant times I have filled them up with plans related to my personal interests. Sleeping interferes all of them with less work done; skipping sleeps interferes all of them with instabilities and disorders.
From time to time, my head reminds me of that "Less sleep = Higher Success chance" injection and the inflicted teenager days. So far, I can report that less sleep did leave me with extreme amount of anxiety I don't know if I could resolve them in any method in any day.