sleeping in school

No matter how much you think you should do this, don't. You lay on the desk or lab table and feel really good at first. You only got 3 hours of sleep the night before due to excessive coding/partying, and the sleep deprivation feels like you're being hit over and over by a freight train. You're in the back of the class, odds are the teacher won't see you do it. Laying down, it feels good, you need this. 45 minutes later you're being poked by the kid behind you and you realize that the bell rang 30 seconds ago. You feel like shit now, your body thinks that it has only had 30 minutes of sleep now instead of the 3 hours you had earlier. Your eyes burn, your mouth has a bad taste in it. Please do the responsible thing, eat a large quantity of penguin mints and wait until you can sleep for a good 3 or 4 hours.

At my school, the usual punishment for this is...

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The teacher will actually demand that students be completely quiet and occasionally even stop lessons and give written work to allow the person to sleep. What usually happens is the person will wake up about half an hour past the bell and sprint to class - it's hilarious to watch someone wake up and realize that they've missed a third of a class period (our classes are, ugh, 90 minutes long.) I've seen several people be left behind by buses for this.

Once, though, in freshman year, I met the Heavy Sleeper. This guy was a senior in my Photography class, which I had last class block, and the teacher said (very quietly) that he had been there since first block. He was still there when we left.

This practice is not, of course, officially sanctioned, but it's more or less ignored by the administrators of the school and is practiced by about 1/4 of the total teachers - those with a sense of humor.

I love my teachers.