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How lack of sleep affects students |
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Tuesday, 07 November 2006 |
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by LINDSAY TIGAR
Intern Lifestyles Reporter
The alarm clock rings bright and early in the morning. Freshman management major W. Bradley Cox awakes after having made it through the night with four hours of sleep.
“I don’t get the kind of sleep that I want to,” Cox said. “I often feel tired and think I could do better if I had more sleep.”
Cox is just one example of a growing trend in students around the nation.
“The trend is the students in high school and in college need more
sleep,” Mark C. Zrull, an associate psychology professor, said.
According to an article published at cbsnews.com, college students
sleep an average of six to seven hours a night, which is down from the
seven to seven-and-a-half hours of sleep in the 1980s.
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C. Nicholas Reece, a junior physical education major, takes an afternoon nap in the basement of the Belk Library & Information Commons. “With being a PE major I stay up real late, whenever I get a break from studying I like to come to the library and nap,” Reece said.
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“Sometimes I go to class tired and don’t pay attention to retain
information like I should,” junior technical photography major Becky E.
Spanner said. “I stay up late because it’s a college student habit. I
try to work out on a regular basis so that I’m tired when I should be.”
Not achieving adequate amounts of sleep can be detrimental to your health.
“The variables associated with short sleep, such as anxiety and
psychological maladjustment, has consistently been shown to negatively
associate with educational performance,” according to a March 2001
article published in The College Student Journal.
However, sleep deprivation alone does not cause a student to perform
inadequately in school. How stress affects the individual also plays a
factor, Zrull said.
Other colleges, such as Duke University, are trying new ways to help students achieve more sleep.
According to cbsnews.com, Duke had such a low registration turnout for
8 a.m. classes they decided to stop offering them to students. They are
hoping to “consider adequate sleep, a part of overall wellness.”
Although college students in general are in need of more shut-eye, the
amount of needed sleep varies from individual to individual.
“There is a distribution of needs in sleep,” psychology professor Dr.
Joan B. Woodworth said. “An average person needs six-and-a-half to
eight-and-a-half hours each night. Two-thirds of people function off of
that amount.”
There are several ways for a student who feels they need more sleep to take steps in the right direction.
“To improve your sleep habits, practice sleep hygiene,” Woodworth said.
“Go to bed at the same time every night and if you wake up in the
morning, don’t toss and turn and not get up past thirty minutes [after
the alarm],” she said.
Woodworth also suggests mild exercise a few hours before going to bed, as well as cutting back a person’s caffeine intake.
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