As we all go through college the amount of hours we sleep daily will most likely decrease considerably. Due to the combination of schoolwork, partying, going to class and the million other things that go into a college students daily activities sleep doesn’t always find a way to make the cut. But how important is it? It is one of the most important things you can do all day, because if you don’t sleep your entire day can be ruined. In this government article it explains the various reasons of why sleep is so important.
For one with a good night’s sleep you can function efficiently throughout the entire day. Without sleep someone will be groggy, cranky, and in the end just tired. Being tired you can not perform your best work because all you’re thinking about is sleeping. Your brain needs the sleep to perform well, without it you will not be at your peak level. Another reason is that it’s healthy for the brain to sleep. While sleeping you are preparing for the next day, as your brain rests and gets enough energy and power to get you through an entire new day. If someone is sleep deficient their brain does not work properly in many aspects including decision making, controlling your emotions as well as behaviors.
Yet, in some ways I can see that sleep is not that important. It is believed that Albert Einstein one of the greatest minds of all-time barely slept. In his biography it is stated he slept from 1-3 hours a night tops. This because he felt sleep was wasted time when he could be making ground breaking discoveries to change the world and sleeping is just in the way. For most people this would not be possible but Albert Einstein was one in a life time. He had a mind like no other and could perform on basically no sleep and perform considerably better than any other mind ever. It is truly remarkable, he may be the exception but there also may be people out there that if they slept so little their brain would act in a different amazing way. Most people would never try because of the research disproving this, but when someone like Albert Einstein did it, maybe it’s worth a shot.
Sleep is a really interesting thing because with each person, their need for sleep differs. Personally, I can run on very little sleep but not for an extremely extended period of time. Eventually, it catches up, whether that means getting sick or not doing as well in school as I should be. And honestly, I feel this is the case for everyone, even if they say they always only need 3 hours of sleep. Einstein was a really unique human in multiple ways and sleep is definitely one of those ways.
I love sleep but tend not to get as much of it as I probably should. I can’t relate this all of it to college because in high school I didn’t get much sleep either. I would probably get between 3-5 hours a night , and e able to function completely fine and not even be exhausted by the end of the next day. Maybe this is because it became my normal routine, but I think it would be interesting if they actually experimented how productive and alert you were in class or at work based on how much sleep you got the night before.
I’d have to disagree with Einstein here, SLEEP IS IMPORTANT! How can you make ground breaking discoveries if you can barely sit up straight? Just last night I was up until two in the morning, and now I am up five hours later, and I can barely keep my eyes open commenting on this post. This doesn’t take much effort to comment on a blog post, but working hard and discovering things like Einstein is talking about takes a lot of effort, and when you don’t sleep you will not have enough energy to do tasks like that to the fullest. I know for sure that when I get out of class today, I am going to take a nice long nap and get the energy I need to bang out my English essay.
I believe some people can function normally on less sleep than others. For example, if I get less than 6 hours of sleep, some would deem me useless the following day. However, my dad can sleep 4 hours consistently and function absolutely fine. I wonder if an experiment could be done on the phenomenon. Maybe by making groups of people classified by how many hours of sleep they get on average each night, tests could be run to see if they are functioning to the highest of their abilities with said hours of sleep.