It’s 7:45a.m. as you arrive to school. Your first class is at 8:00a.m., leaving you with that sacred 15 minutes to grab a cup of coffee before class. You walk into cafeteria, only to realize that the line for Starbucks is about twelve miles long. You wonder, “didn’t anyone sleep last night?” The truth is that a vast majority of Bucks students are not getting nearly enough sleep. College students should get about 8 hours of sleep a night. Instead, the average Bucks student sleeps for about 6 hours.
Many students find it increasingly difficult to balance sleep between class, work, and homework. While sleep is a necessity for everyone, many students rank it low on their priorities.
Theresa Aldwin, 20, an education major from Trevose, expresses that she finds it almost impossible to make room for sleep between school and work.
“Working as a bartender until 2 a.m. leaves me a 7 hour window between work and my first class. I’d be lucky to catch 5 hours of sleep,” states Aldwin.
The two most significant reasons Bucks students claim to cause their lack of sleep are homework and work. A majority of students have a part-time job coinciding with their education, leaving them with less free time. Without this free time, students feel obligated to subtract time from their sleep in order to finish assignments.
When asked how often students pull an all-nighter, a handful of students replied that they do so a few times a semester. Almost all students who reported to pull the occasional all-nighter pointed their reasoning toward school.
“Sometimes I just need an entire night free from distractions to catch up on all of my work. There isn’t enough daylight to keep up,” Bryan Tanchet, 20, a criminal justice major from Bensalem complains about the difficulty finding the time to complete homework.
Other reasons students claim to prevent them from sleeping are spending too much time on the computer, and watching T.V. all night. While the computer and T.V. prove to be a great distraction by themselves, they also can prevent one from falling asleep. The light waves produced by these objects that students seem almost addicted to actually lower melatonin in the body, which should be at a high level in order for one to get a healthy sleep.
The effects evident on students from a lack of sleep vary among people. The most common reported effect of sleep deprivation among students is the inability to concentrate, grasp, and store new information.
“I find that I will sit in class for over an hour the morning after a long night, and once I walk out, I can instantly forget everything learned. I feel brain dead,” expresses Gabrielle O’Neill, 18, a physical education major from Fairless Hills, regarding her inability to concentrate after being awake for too long.
Some common side effects of sleep deprivation are a lower attention span, a shorter memory span, irritability, higher stress levels, headaches, and a decreased immune system. All of these effects can easily interfere with a student’s academic performance, creating a negative impact.
“I used to stay up all night before exams during my first semester, then I learned how horrible it was for me. I would study for so long, but my brain was wiped out by the time of the exam, and would leave me frail physically,” Jamie Sadlick, 19, and engineering major from Richboro recounts her old methods.
The amount of sleep a student gets is a major factor when it comes to their academic standing. Many students would be surprised to learn that just two extra hours of sleep a night has the ability to raise their test scores, speed up their attention span, and lower their stress levels.
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