Section Four: Regarding the classroom environment

Tip #12: If you’re scheduled to give a presentation, cut sleep short the night before. Or, even better, forgo the nightly habit altogether and sap the strength of your 2nd wind by running briskly to class. Fatigue calms the nerves. When you’re fighting to stay awake, the prospect of elevating heart rate, perspiring, playing with pocket contents, and other signs of public speaking angst, all appear, to the instinctual decision-making portion of your brain, to be unnecessary, energy-wasting behaviors. Moreover, whenever you’re approaching death faster than the speed naturally dictated by the passage of time, as is the case with extreme sleep deprivation, the instinctual decision-making portion of your brain has far more influence over what you actually end up doing than what the self-conscious decision-making portion of your brain would like you do to.