Girls crowd around a lunch table overfilled with Panda Express and Chick-fil-A containers.
One rests her chin on her hand, her eyelids heavy as she watches the girl across the table bounce in her seat.
“I got no sleep last night,” says Hannah Strader, who speaks with a lightly teasing tone while rolling her eyes.
“I don’t sleep,” replies her friend Grace Pritchett, laughing.
Strader, a junior from Shawnee Mission South High School, was kept awake all night by her friend and classmate, Pritchett, a senior who, as she claims, doesn’t sleep.
The two are at the Flint Hills Publications Workshop, a program for journalism students that combines a rigorous curriculum with the expert teaching of journalism professionals. Most students are tired after classes lasting from 8:45 a.m. until 9 p.m.
In addition to classes ending after sunset, many students also have homework assignments to pursue before sleep may be considered. For a few select students, lack of sleep is not a problem.
“I don’t really sleep -- at all,” Pritchett said again. “I usually use a computer to distract me, and last night I was Skyping a friend from back home at like, 2 in the morning. I didn’t know Hannah was so sensitive to movement and sound at night, or I would’ve tried harder to keep it down.”
Although she didn’t get much sleep that night, Strader said she, in part, brought it upon herself.
“If I’m trying to fall asleep and people are talking, I have to reply,” she said. “I have an opinion on everything.”
Although lack of sleep was a common problem, campers quickly discovered Caribou Coffee, the cozy coffee shop across from the food court in the K-State Student Union.
“Oh my gosh, I had to have two cups of coffee that morning,” Strader said. “Except one of them was decaf because I didn’t realize that when I was making it in the hotel room. But after that, I came here and got some of the good stuff.”
Strader is not alone in populating Caribou Coffee in the early hours before camp sessions start. Shalaun Johnson, the sassy and spirited worker at the local coffee destination, said there had been many sleepy FHPW students coming in need of a morning wake up shock of a double shot espresso.
“We always know they’re tired because they don’t answer questions very well,”Johnson says, laughter bubbling out of her. “When you ask ‘What can I do for you today?’ or ‘What size would you like?’ they usually just stare at you for a few minutes before they can produce any actual words,” she adds with a smile.
Gossip and playful laughter swells over the lunch table once again.
“You are so loud. I couldn’t sleep all night,” Strader says.
“I don’t sleep.”
Emily VanSchmus is a junior at Free State High School and a student in the advanced writing class.
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