According to Wei-Shin Lai, MD, “College Students simply don’t get enough sleep”. Wei-Shin Lai has been at the Penn State Student Health Center since 2007. She says, ” If I had to choose the biggest problem concerning sleep in college students, it’s just that they choose to not sleep”. You can read more about what she says here.
One of the worst habits that attributes to sleep loss in students is all nighters. It takes 3 days to recover from an all nighter. On the first day after staying up all night, you may find that you feel fine! This is because of the adrenaline in your body. The second day is harder because your body is really starting to drag and everything that you do gets done poorly. By the third day your body is beginning to recover, and by the fourth day you should be good to go!
According to Lai, “A significant portion of 15-25 year olds are known to sleep scientists as “owls”. This means that they have sleep cycles of 26 hours instead of 24. For example, someone who wakes up at 8 wouldn’t get sleepy until 2 am instead of 12. A tactic to beat this tricky situation is to train your internal clock to wake up with the sun. Lights should be avoided late at night, but in the morning those with sleeping issues in college should expose themselves to the light as much as possible.
So, now for the question that has been on everyones mind, how many hours of sleep should you actually be getting? The answer varies. According to Lai, the answer is 7 to 9. However, this number could change depending on the person and the circumstance. Lai says, “Women who are done with growing and maturation, having started their growth spurt at age 10-12, will be fine with an average of 7.5-8 hours of sleep. If a woman is still possibly growing, 8-9 hours is recommended. Men who are still in their growth spurt which started at age 16-17 should have 9 hours of sleep. You may suspect continued late growth if your parents matured later than their peers”. According to other doctors at Stanford University, “The average sleep requirement for college students is well over eight hours, and the majority of students would fall within the range of this value plus or minus one hour”.
The amount of sleep at the end of the day depends on a number of factors, like schoolwork, time management, sleeping conditions (noisy roommates), homesickness, excitability to beat Rutgers next Saturday, or even some legitimate sleep disorders such as Insomnia (not the cookies).
A student fast asleep on her school work.
I really enjoyed reading this article. I am definitely a culprit for pulling all nighters, especially when I’m around friends or if I have a lot of work that I really want to just get done. I think a lot of college kids have this problem and that they should definitely evaluate how many hours of sleep they actually get a night. This website has some pretty helpful advice on how to get some sleep.
Your blog hits one of the most common problems we college students encounter and I have substantiated the 3- days recover cycle through my own experience. It’s like “Look at me! None- sleep doesn’t have any influence on me at all.” on the first day, “I can’t stand this any more… I’ll never ever stay up all night.” on the second day, and finally “Fortunately I begin to feel better. Thank God.” on the third day. So I want to raise your attention again: don’t be all nighters, for the feeling is terrible.
Also, check out some tips for a good night’s sleep here. Among them, I find that doing regular exercises is really a good way to go: “Exercise can promote more regular sleep and wake patterns as well as reduce stress. However it’s important to avoid exercise and other vigorous activities three-to-four hours before going to bed to avoid awakening the body even more and making it more difficult to fall asleep.”
All in all, let’s start care about sleep from today! For our minds and bodies!
I really enjoyed reading this article. The past two weeks I was rushing a sorority, and last night was the first night I did not have to send the alarm in a long time! I slept 12 hours, and it was amazing. The last few mornings, I have dreaded getting out of bed, but today I was ready to conquer all of the homework i had to catch up on. I struggle late at night with avoiding light because I love sitting on my phone and mindlessly scrolling through Twitter and Instagram. Recently, the nights where I have fallen asleep with my TV on in the background instead of my phone in front of my face, I have fallen asleep faster and slept better. Overall, I wish there was more time in the day, so I could finish my tasks and still have enough sleep to function with a happy face!
^^ I also can’t wait to beat down rutgers
I recall my psychology class, taught by /Brian Crosby , where he described sleep as a “bank that students put sleep in and take sleep out of”. Some nights you pull and all nighter, and you take out more sleep from your bank than you put in. This puts you in to “debt”, which you then sleep more to try and repay that “debt”. Another issue in the battle between sleep and college students is the issue of school work. Professors generally say for every hour you spend in class, up to 3 hours are spent outside of class studying. I saw an article on here that detailed it further, but the moral of the story was that there are only 8 extra hours in a day for eat, exercise, and sleeping. there’s just simply not enough hours in the day to do everything well
I live on the 26 hour clock. But the sleep I get night by night varies. There are nights I can get a solid 10 hours and night I’ll get maybe four. But you know this week is going to be rough waiting to take down Rutgers.