Admit it. We’ve all been there. Just watching the days slip away constantly telling ourselves that we have time to study, there’s not need to start just yet, it’s unimportant. Then the day before the big test arrives and suddenly we realize we haven’t done anything to prepare for it. What do we do?
We pull an all nighted. Cram a weeks worth of studying into one full night. Forgo sleep in favor of sitting in the library or our dorm rooms frantically going over all our notes, reviewing our text books, and searching google for the answers. How much sleep does the typical college student get a night? According to University of Georgia only six to six point nine hours a night. That mean before even pulling an all nighted college students are sleep deprived.
What’s there to do about that though? Nothing. It is impossible to be able to maintain adequate levels of sleep in college without giving something else up like a social life or good grades. But the human body is an amazing thing and is able to adapt to these low levels of sleep and maintain normal levels of brain activity.
It’s when college students start pulling the all nighters that things go south. They pull the all nighted feel like they know the information even though they know they crammed it all in and go on with their day. They may have a class or two before their exam and might end up just falling asleep in that class.
But then they get to the exam look at the first question and all of what they studied is gone. Nothing. Nada. They can’t remember a single thing. This is because sleep allows the brain to process memories. There are three stages involved when making a memory. Acquisition which is the action taking place, Consolidation which is the memory becoming stable, and Recall which allows the brain to process the information at any given time.
A study by Harvard University found that the recall stage of memory only happens when one is asleep. And to add to that discovery the most affected part of memory that recall helps is called declarative memory. Which basically means our knowledge. This type of memory is what helps us recall what we ate for dinner last night, or the capital of our state, or most importantly what we studied in our text book for 12 hours the day before.
So next time you’re thinking of pulling an all nighter, remember that it actually negatively affects you instead of a positive effect Not only will you be sleep deprived but you’re almost guaranteed to do poorly on the exam. 
I remember Andrew saying in class that if you eat chocolate before a test, you are likely to do better on it. I wonder if one can pull an all nighter, eat chocolate before a test, and do better than they would have without eating it. That would be an interesting experiment. Take three groups of people of the same IQ or grade point average. Have one group study and get a good night’s sleep, have the second group pull an all nighter studying, and have the third group pull an all nighter but also be provided with chocolate to eat before the test. I wonder if the chocolate-eating all nighters would do a little bit better than the all nighters. Great post!
I also didn’t know that memory is processed when we are sleeping ! It is awesome what the human body can do when we are awake. I found an article that explains various studies all over the world that have been conducted to explore the link between memory and sleep. Here it is if you would like to check it out , http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/memory-medic/201103/how-sleep-helps-memory
I found this very interesting. I did not know that memories are processed while we are sleeping. I never try to pull an all nighter for studying because I have heard negative things about it. But if I ever feel like I need to in the future, I will remember that I sleep is important for memories to process.