Not Getting Enough Sleep in College: How Bad Is It Really? - part 1 - women campus

College students are notorious for pulling all-nighters to cram for exams and write papers, and for staying up late on most other nights to party and socialize. Sleep isn't exactly a top priority for most of us. Even though it's been drilled into our heads over and over again how important it is, so are classes, club meetings, extracurricular activities, and maintaining relationships. I mean, how bad can a few all-nighters a semester really be? Sleeping in on the weekends cancels them out, right? How much sleep are we really getting… and is it enough? 

How much are college students sleeping?

In an online survey of 100 college students, 68% reported sleeping six or seven hours per night on weekdays, with another 20% sleeping five hours or less. Upon first glance, six or seven hours may seem like a decent amount of sleep, but Sharon Glezen, MD, Medical Chief of University Health Services at the University of Rochester, warns that "the need for sleep differs from patient to patient. Some college students are awake and alert after six hours of sleep per night and others require nine or more."

Because of this variation, as well as the fact that the quality of sleep can differ (seven hours of tossing and turning definitely isn't the same as seven hours of deep sleep), it's more important to focus not on how much students are sleeping across the board, but whether or not they are sleeping enough. This is subjective and can be gauged by how students feel the next day – how tired or rested they feel.

In the spring of 2010, the American College Health Association conducted their National College Health Assessment, a nationwide survey on health behaviors and trends of college students, gathering 95,712 student responses from 139 different schools. The questions on sleep habits below show that while there is a large range of responses, students generally feel well rested only half of the time, and sleepy or dragged out on all the other days. Seeing as our schedules are usually packed every single day of the week, feeling rested for only two or three of those days, the most popular responses, probably isn't cutting it. 

What Goes On Beyond the Surveys

While these studies show that college students are not doing horribly on average, we all know what really goes on during the semester. Sleeping becomes a luxury at certain points in the semester and most of us have put it on the back burner at some point or another.

As Sarah, a sophomore at UCLA, stated, "It's just a cruel vicious cycle. I stay up late during the week catching up on stuff so I'm completely exhausted by Friday. So then I sleep until the afternoon on the weekend, get behind on work again, and end up barely sleeping all week again to catch up." The online survey showed that crashing on the weekends is the case for many of us: 72% reported sleeping eight or nine hours on the weekend, with a whopping 28% sleeping ten or more hours then. 
 

It might not always be this bad, though. Sometimes we only have to sacrifice a huge amount of sleep for studying during midterms, finals, or if we have some huge presentation coming up. Courtney, a senior, recalls how "freshman year was a disaster but then I learned to manage my time better. Now I usually get enough rest but finals week is still always bad. I probably sleep half the amount I normally do."

One student at the University of Rochester explains how she typically sleeps at a reasonable time, but often naps instead of actually sleeping on nights before exams. "I'll stay up until 3am, and set my alarm for 6 to cram for the last two hours before the test. So it's more like a nap... and usually on a couch in the library."

So is one case worse than the other - being sleep-deprived on a regular basis versus just right before important exams or papers that are due?

Short Term Effects

It turns out that the short term effects for both cases are exactly the same. Any time you don't sleep enough, your body isn't repairing itself and you won't even remember most of whatever it is you're studying at 4am anyway. Even if you stay up for a day or two after getting eight hours a night the entire rest of the semester, you're just as susceptible to the short term effects as someone who consistently sleeps five hours Monday through Friday and ten hours on the weekend.

Beyond feeling tired, lack of sleep may have many consequences, according to Dr. Glezen, even in the short term. Some of these include:

• Decreased alertness: Probably the most obvious side effect, not sleeping enough means your body isn't being refreshed and your energy levels aren't being restored, so you feel lethargic and drowsy, and have difficulty focusing on tasks.
• Memory and cognitive impairment: Those all-nighters are usually counterproductive. You might get through a few extra chapters and skim through a few more lectures notes, but your ability to process that information and actually recall it during the test is drastically reduced if you skip the sleep and head straight for the exam after leaving the library.
• Strained relationships: Mornings are rough enough, and the more sleep-deprived you are the more irritable, cranky, and moody you'll be. Your normal morning cup of coffee won't do you any good either if you've already been chugging it all night.
• Increased risk of injury: Whether you're working, driving or just performing everyday tasks, the combination of the above effects and being less alert overall leads to higher chances of carelessness and accidents that could be avoided with proper rest. Risk of automobile accidents in particular is increased, says Dr. Glezen, putting both yourself and others in danger.