I’m sure all of you have seen those equations going around the internet.
Sleep plus social life equals bad grades; good grades plus social life equals no sleep; good grades plus sleep equals no social life. But we as students should be able to balance all of those.
Studies show that seventy percent of college students do not get enough sleep.
Let’s look at the effects of that on students, shall we?
Do you want to die? No?
Well that alone should be motivation to sleep.
Of course it’s only in extreme cases of sleep deprivation, but it is possible to die because of lack of sleep. However, a more realistic symptom which highly relates to students is that not getting enough sleep results in memory lapses and the inability to remember the things you’ve learned throughout the day.
As most people should know, your brain processes information you’ve obtained throughout the day while you sleep.
But if you’re not getting the amount of sleep you need you won’t be able to process of put that information away for later access.
Should we as students be unable to keep accessing the information our grades will suffer, and if our grades continue to suffer our GPAs will slowly worsen.
I’m sure many of us plan on attending graduate school or at least plan on applying for prestigious jobs. Both of those future plans will pay attention to our GPAs and academic performance.
With lack of sleep affecting our grades, our chances of getting into said graduate program or being offered said prestigious job will lessen and our futures will not be what we hoped they’d be.
Other symptoms which affect students are obesity, irritability, and depression.
Studies show that a bad self image and emotional depression effect academic performance more than we realize. Other studies show that lack of sleep promote depression and obesity.
Us as undergrad students are at a strange point in our lives. We’re only just now starting to enter the world as adults – as our own people and not our parent’s property.
The fact that we are at such an intense part of our lives means that we really can’t afford to be suffering from poor self image and depression.
If we look in the mirror and can’t think of anything good to say about ourselves, not only will our academic performance suffer, but our social lives will suffer as well.
And both of those things combined will most likely make us start to feel depressed and irritable. And going back to our futures, our newfound depression will make us less likely to even want to try to pursue these goals of ours.
Students are profoundly sleep deprived, and most do not realize the affects that has on them. Lots of students think they perform better when they’re tired – like drunk people who think they drive better when under the influence of alcohol – when in reality they are performing ridiculously worse than they should be.
A straight A, 4.0 student could turn into a 1.0 student kicked out of school for terrible performance. And maybe they’ll die later on if their sleep habits do not improve.
I’m sure you’re not wondering how you can help rid yourself of sleep deprivation so you don’t get kicked out of school, die, or anything as unfortunate as that.
One thing you can do is to start going to bed just fifteen minutes earlier every night. Adding that little amount of sleep will gradually help you become less tired and in effect improve your grades.
Another thing you can do is to avoid drinking caffeine six to eight hours before bed.
Those two little things will help you and your sleep deprivation greatly and then improve your grades and essentially your future.
Sleep is a much more important part of life than most people realize. It takes up one third of our lives and affects the rest of our lives in about a thousand ways.
Now armed with this information, venture forth and live your life the best you can – with seven to nine hours of sleep a night.
