“There is only one thing people like that is good for them; a good night's sleep” ~~Edgar Watson Howe
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My mom used to tell me I was a night owl, even before birth. I’d keep her up all night by doing karate kicks in her womb. As a kid, I was constantly getting in trouble because I would try to stay up late at night to read whatever fantastic book I had my nose stuck in at the time. When my parents made me turn the lights out, I’d sneak under my blankets and continue to read with a flashlight. Back then, night life was always more desirable than mornings. I could stay up all night and would have loved to sleep all day if I had been allowed. To this day I am still not a morning person. I am not a fluffy bunny, eager to face the world kind of person at 05:00am. My dad used to greet me in the morning with, “Who let the angry hamster out of its cage?”
In some ways, the night life is still easier than greeting the dawn of the new day. I can socialize into the wee hours of the night if there’s a desire, I can read a good book until 05:00am in the morning, but sadly I’ve become an adult.
Ah, crap…
I now have this thing called responsibility. When that “weekend” rolls away, I have to arrive at work bushy tailed and bright eyed, ready to conquer the world. At thirty years old, I’ve been able to control the angry hamster. Now I simply arrive, a sleepy, quiet hamster that doesn’t speak until I’m fully awake and able to be pleasant. But, because I pride myself in being responsible and clear headed at work, I value my sleep. I have realized the necessity and thankfulness of peaceful sleep. Eight hours of slumber does wondrous things.
And so, onto the reason why I am rambling on about how much I covet sleeping. Here at McMurdo there are a few departments that have to bite the bullet and have a swing shift as well as a night shift. Cargo, Fleet Ops, Shuttles, and Air Services are just a few of the departments that have a night shift. All other departments pull the normal 10hr, six days a week, day shift schedule. We call these folks Townies.
Flights come in on a 24hr basis and we need people to drive the passengers as well as workers back and forth to the ice runway. That is where we trusty little shuttlers come into play. We have 26 shuttle drivers. Some departments in ATO (the Antarctic Terminal Operations, the branch of operations that Shuttles falls under) do night shift for half the season. The shuttle department does it in thirds because there are so many of us. I opted to take my turn at night shift mid season so I could have the opportunity to transition back to the day shift for the end of the season.
I have never worked a job where I was required to work night shift. It was something I had always avoided and for good reason. I always had this feeling it wasn’t quite my cup of tea. But here, I was willing to give it a shot. I was here to support science, so why not? After all, it’s 24hrs of daylight here, right? Can you even tell the difference? Does it really matter if you work days or nights? Well…let me tell you, yes, it does.
Thankfully we are given what are called “Transition Days” to help us adjust to the switch. These are extra days off and it usually falls on one of our already scheduled days off or over a holiday. My transition day fell on Thanksgiving. So I had three days off in a row because we’re also given an extra day off if it’s a holiday. Three days off!! I should have been in heaven, but instead I felt like I was in purgatory and I didn’t know what I had done to get there.
When you transition, you disappear as one person, and you emerge from your cocoon three days later as a new and very different person. However, you don’t exactly emerge as a beautiful person like the moth emerging as a breathtaking butterfly, and everyone says “Ooh, ahh.” Instead, you emerge a monster and everyone asks, “What happened to you??”
Or at least I feel as if I’ve emerged a monster. The world was abruptly different to me. People who I saw on a daily basis when I was on day shift I suddenly saw in a new light. I realized what it was. I was running into them at 9:00pm and they had just left the bar and were happily intoxicated and my day was just getting started, and I was finding them highly annoying. How dare they stumble into my blurry, sleepy world laughing, shouting, and carousing with each other. They weren’t allowed to be having fun when I had to stumble up the hill and disappear into the tan building to go to work. The irony of it is that just a few days before I transitioned I was probably stumbling out of the bar at 9:00pm with them, content to call them friend. I didn’t care then, but I suddenly did now.
My mom used to tell me I was a night owl, even before birth. I’d keep her up all night by doing karate kicks in her womb. As a kid, I was constantly getting in trouble because I would try to stay up late at night to read whatever fantastic book I had my nose stuck in at the time. When my parents made me turn the lights out, I’d sneak under my blankets and continue to read with a flashlight. Back then, night life was always more desirable than mornings. I could stay up all night and would have loved to sleep all day if I had been allowed. To this day I am still not a morning person. I am not a fluffy bunny, eager to face the world kind of person at 05:00am. My dad used to greet me in the morning with, “Who let the angry hamster out of its cage?”
In some ways, the night life is still easier than greeting the dawn of the new day. I can socialize into the wee hours of the night if there’s a desire, I can read a good book until 05:00am in the morning, but sadly I’ve become an adult.
Ah, crap…
I now have this thing called responsibility. When that “weekend” rolls away, I have to arrive at work bushy tailed and bright eyed, ready to conquer the world. At thirty years old, I’ve been able to control the angry hamster. Now I simply arrive, a sleepy, quiet hamster that doesn’t speak until I’m fully awake and able to be pleasant. But, because I pride myself in being responsible and clear headed at work, I value my sleep. I have realized the necessity and thankfulness of peaceful sleep. Eight hours of slumber does wondrous things.
And so, onto the reason why I am rambling on about how much I covet sleeping. Here at McMurdo there are a few departments that have to bite the bullet and have a swing shift as well as a night shift. Cargo, Fleet Ops, Shuttles, and Air Services are just a few of the departments that have a night shift. All other departments pull the normal 10hr, six days a week, day shift schedule. We call these folks Townies.
Flights come in on a 24hr basis and we need people to drive the passengers as well as workers back and forth to the ice runway. That is where we trusty little shuttlers come into play. We have 26 shuttle drivers. Some departments in ATO (the Antarctic Terminal Operations, the branch of operations that Shuttles falls under) do night shift for half the season. The shuttle department does it in thirds because there are so many of us. I opted to take my turn at night shift mid season so I could have the opportunity to transition back to the day shift for the end of the season.
I have never worked a job where I was required to work night shift. It was something I had always avoided and for good reason. I always had this feeling it wasn’t quite my cup of tea. But here, I was willing to give it a shot. I was here to support science, so why not? After all, it’s 24hrs of daylight here, right? Can you even tell the difference? Does it really matter if you work days or nights? Well…let me tell you, yes, it does.
Thankfully we are given what are called “Transition Days” to help us adjust to the switch. These are extra days off and it usually falls on one of our already scheduled days off or over a holiday. My transition day fell on Thanksgiving. So I had three days off in a row because we’re also given an extra day off if it’s a holiday. Three days off!! I should have been in heaven, but instead I felt like I was in purgatory and I didn’t know what I had done to get there.
When you transition, you disappear as one person, and you emerge from your cocoon three days later as a new and very different person. However, you don’t exactly emerge as a beautiful person like the moth emerging as a breathtaking butterfly, and everyone says “Ooh, ahh.” Instead, you emerge a monster and everyone asks, “What happened to you??”
Or at least I feel as if I’ve emerged a monster. The world was abruptly different to me. People who I saw on a daily basis when I was on day shift I suddenly saw in a new light. I realized what it was. I was running into them at 9:00pm and they had just left the bar and were happily intoxicated and my day was just getting started, and I was finding them highly annoying. How dare they stumble into my blurry, sleepy world laughing, shouting, and carousing with each other. They weren’t allowed to be having fun when I had to stumble up the hill and disappear into the tan building to go to work. The irony of it is that just a few days before I transitioned I was probably stumbling out of the bar at 9:00pm with them, content to call them friend. I didn’t care then, but I suddenly did now.
Jealousy is a deadly sin I tell you.
Then there’s the food. It looks and tastes vastly different in the world of nights. At the time that I was supposed to be sitting down to eat my “dinner,” I found myself eating breakfast for my “dinner” because that was what was being served for the rest of the day shift population. There’s always been the classic debate over the awesomeness of having “breakfast” for dinner, and yes, occasionally, it is awesome. But when you’re forced to eat breakfast for dinner for five weeks, every day, you kind of want to take your plate of scrambled eggs and deliberately go outside and feed it to a skua and break the Antarctic Treaty.
By going to the night shift, you sacrifice your opportunity to socialize with those you had once associated with, especially if they do not go to nights with you. Sightings are sporadic and few and far between. It was a pleasant surprise to stumble upon someone you once hung out with all the time and you were able to say hello. I quickly realized that folks who I had once hung out with on the day shift stared at me cautiously when they did happen to run into me. I returned their stares, perplexed. Why did they always cringe and quickly turn the other way as if they had never seen me sitting there? Did I have food in my teeth? I soon grasped that it was because the angry hamster of my childhood years had resurfaced and the adult version was no friendlier than the youngster version. My sleep cycle had been completely turned upside down going to nights and the angry hamster didn’t know how to handle it.
Then there’s the food. It looks and tastes vastly different in the world of nights. At the time that I was supposed to be sitting down to eat my “dinner,” I found myself eating breakfast for my “dinner” because that was what was being served for the rest of the day shift population. There’s always been the classic debate over the awesomeness of having “breakfast” for dinner, and yes, occasionally, it is awesome. But when you’re forced to eat breakfast for dinner for five weeks, every day, you kind of want to take your plate of scrambled eggs and deliberately go outside and feed it to a skua and break the Antarctic Treaty.
By going to the night shift, you sacrifice your opportunity to socialize with those you had once associated with, especially if they do not go to nights with you. Sightings are sporadic and few and far between. It was a pleasant surprise to stumble upon someone you once hung out with all the time and you were able to say hello. I quickly realized that folks who I had once hung out with on the day shift stared at me cautiously when they did happen to run into me. I returned their stares, perplexed. Why did they always cringe and quickly turn the other way as if they had never seen me sitting there? Did I have food in my teeth? I soon grasped that it was because the angry hamster of my childhood years had resurfaced and the adult version was no friendlier than the youngster version. My sleep cycle had been completely turned upside down going to nights and the angry hamster didn’t know how to handle it.
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| Haggard and fighting the angry hamster |
I was often found standing outside, staring up at the sun, scratching my head bewilderingly, asking those who walked by the time. I had no concept of days. I went to bed at 7:30am, say on a Tuesday, because that was my night time and I would wake up at 5:00pm to go eat breakfast and go to work, yet it was still Tuesday when I woke up. How was this possible? Shouldn’t it be Wednesday? I would go to work on one day, eat lunch at midnight and end work on the following day when everyone else was getting up to start their day. Yet I was still starting work on that same day, just ten hours later when everyone else was done with their day. It all blurred together. I had no idea what happened to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday…and where did Sunday go? Anybody, Anybody?
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| Disoriented and lost. What day is it? |
I can easily and gladly sleep all day and I can easily and gladly stay up all night if it’s something that occurs spontaneously. I’ve done it many times; in fact I’ve pulled a few all nighters here since being in Antarctica. It was all in the name of fun. But when it came time to transition, my mind and my body fought the inevitable tooth and nail. I discovered very quickly that there is nothing worse than attempting to force your body to stay up all night and then sleep all day, the key word being “force” here. Who wants to force themselves to do anything? The little devil on my shoulder played havoc with my mental psyche during my transition. “What’s this transition malarkey you speak of? Hogwash! You need to sleep? Oh, you poor little baby. Sleeping during the day is overrated; didn’t anyone ever tell you that?” And on and on it went.
A full eight hours of sleep became a necessity. Sometimes ten hours of sleep. For some reason, you needed more sleep on this shift. If I didn’t get my full eight, I emerged from my dark cave in the “morning” a very angry human being and it was everyone else’s fault. I had nothing to do with it. I would lie fuming in my bed at the foul cretan down the hall who slammed their door at 1:00pm because it woke me up in the middle of my “night.” What were they thinking? Don’t they see the “Day Sleeper” sign attached to our door for the entire world to see? THAT MEANS YOU TIPTOE PAST OUR DOOR!! YES, YOU!
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| Housing gives this sign to put on your door if you have what they call a "Day Sleeper" in your room. There were 3 of us in our room. |
I’ve come to the conclusion that to work the night shift it takes a special breed. And the community of McMurdo realizes it too. People speculate if you’re cut out for it or not. You return to the land of days and people stare at you in awe. You took one for the team by going to nights. I bow down to you special breed. You can do something that I am frankly, not good at. I will gladly and openly admit that.
I arrived to MacTown a pleasant, friendly, quiet person. Five weeks ago, I morphed into Satan’s spawn.
It is time to transform back into that beautiful and breathtaking butterfly.
P.S.—My rant having come to a conclusion, I have to say, there’s pluses and minuses to everything. The nightshift had its fair share of pluses. More to come soon when I reveal how the transition back to the world of light goes…
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| Returning to the light with a smile! |
