Believe it or not, I'm not a big fan of night shifts.
Rereading my entry from last night, I got to thinking about night shifts and how you feel during each successive day:
Day 1: Usually not fun but at least you have the energy of being fresh.
Day 2: The worst day of night shift. You're still recovering from the night before, and your sleep schedule is still not adjusted. Usually whichever of your muscles and joints have a tendency to hurt will start hurting a LOT during this shift.
Day 3: The least painful, in my opinion. You've sort of gotten in the groove of sleeping days and working nights.
Day 4+: Constant exhaustion from keeping up a schedule that's so wrong.
Of course, I've never done more than two weeks in a row of a night shift. Maybe it eventually gets better. I read about some study where a person adjusted to glasses that flipped the world upside down, so if you can adjust to that, I guess you can adjust to anything.
i did nights for 5 years in the ghetto. i don't know how i did it or how.
ReplyDeleteI'm a pharmacist, but I work the night shift. I learned a long time ago that my cortisol cycle is all mixed up (when I was in college before I choose what I wanted to do), so the night shift is perfect for me.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if my cortisol is a result of staying up late, or my staying up late is a result of my cortisol.
The weirdest part of the pharmacy night shift is that we work 7 12 hour shifts and then are off for for 7 days . . . that off/on really screws you up.
My move to the night shift will start in a couple of weeks. I don't know what to feel! I'm excited, but I'm also scared. I've written about the advantages and disadvantages of working the night shift. I hope you check it out and leave me some tips on how to survive the big change. Thanks!
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