Life Lesson Number Two: Sleep

Everyone needs sleep.

As I sit here in the HUB at 11:45 pm on this fine Tuesday night, I find myself thinking about one thing and one thing only, my bed.  I truly can't wait to jump into bed in about an hour.  As I mentioned in my last blog post, it's essential to be two steps ahead of the game, so that on the due date of an assignment, you aren't frantically cramming and have time to sleep that night.

College has taught me a few things about sleep. The very first and most important is that you need to appreciate every single second that your head touches your pillow.  Second, there are no screaming parents telling you when it's bed time, so it's up to you to figure out your own sleeping schedule.  Now you must decide whether you should stay up till three in the morning to work on a paper, study or watch a couple episodes of Netflix.  The choice is yours and really could be detrimental to your well being the next day. Third, your body needs sleep and without it you become cranky, delirious and just not yourself.

I want you to stop and think for a minute.  How many hours of sleep did you get last night?  I highly doubt you got the 7 to 9 hours of sleep that the National Sleep Foundation  recommends for those that are ages 18-25.   As a matter of fact, I got about six hours of sleep last night.  I'll admit that sometimes it's nearly impossible to get the recommended hours. Yet, what many fail to realize is that lack of sleep affects our health tremendously.  As reported by Harvard University, there have been studies that link obesity to lack of sleep.  My theory about lack of sleep and obesity is that the longer you stay up, the more likely you are to snack and the more you snack (my late night snacks usually aren't that healthy aka Doritos and Oreos) the more weight you could possibly gain.  We must take into consideration that there are other factors that influence weight gain, however Harvard University has also reported that lack of sleep leads to problems with cardiovascular disease, immune infections, diabetes and even the common cold.  Sleep is not only essential for overall health, but academic success as well.

Think about all the times you've been in class or a lecture hall and everything the professor is saying is a blur because you're just too tired to even begin to comprehend.  This I will admit happens to me more frequently than it should.  Research done by the University of Michigan claims that about seventy-five percent of their students don't get enough sleep. To make up for this sleep deprivation, the university found research that napping for a half hour or forty minutes a day could help academic performance.

By now, you probably understand the point that I am trying to get across; we all need sleep.  So it isn't the smart thing to pull all-nighters.  As I said before, some nights it's hard to get the seven to nine hours of sleep but you need it, so make time for it.

Lastly, coming into college I feared that I wasn't going to be able to sleep well in a new bed, let alone a new place.  The photograph above is one of my lovely bed and though I do miss my queen size bed at home, I'll admit that I sleep pretty fantastically on my little twin bed here at Penn State.  However, I would recommend a mattress topper.  Mine is about two inches thick and really makes a world of difference.  After all, I think college has made me realize that sleep is my favorite past time.  It's late now and I should probably get some sleep and so should you tonight.