Sleep is always a fun topic.  Many research and news articles have been written pertaining to sleep.  There’s even a good portion of them relating to college students.  Personally, I never want to go to sleep, but when I do, I rarely want to get back up.

Most current articles recommend around eight hours sleep.  If I understand, this is the amount needed to wake up in the morning feeling fully refreshed.  It sounds like a good feeling.  My recommendation to freshman:  find your limitations in regards to sleep.  For example, over my undergrad years, I discovered that if I give myself less than three hours of sleep one night, then my body will demand ten hours the next night.  I have slept through many alarms that were meant to get me up with six hours of sleep after having three hours the night before. In addition, I can go 2-3 nights with 4.5 hours of sleep per night.  I utilize this when distributing hours of the day between work and sleep.   If I cannot afford 10 hours sleep the following night, I will make sure to give myself at least 4.5 hours of sleep the coming night.  Overall, a typical school week for me will be 4-6 hours of sleep on the weekdays and then 9-12 hours on the weekends to catch up and ready myself for the coming sleep deprivation.

I dislike it when sleep articles speak to their audiences with the assumption that they don’t realize that they aren’t getting enough sleep.  I myself am very well aware that I am losing out on sleep.  I am immediately aware of it as I assault my alarm clock every morning.  Articles then tend to go on about why getting the recommended numbers of sleep is important.  Alright, great, just let my professors and supervisors know so they’ll lighten my work load or if that does not work you can always try manipulating physics to add an extra 2-3 hours to our 24-hour days.  The point I want to make is that the majority of us know we need more sleep, but fitting in the time for it can be a hassle.

If these articles truly wanted people to get the necessary amount of sleep, instead of reminding us a hundred times to get sufficient sleep, they should investigate which factors keep people from getting sleep.  For the most part, the authors of these sleep articles are under the assumption that the reason people do not take their sleeping seriously is due to the peoples’ negligence over the purpose and benefits that comes from the suggested amount of sleep.  This could be somewhat true, but I believe most people are aware of what a good night’s sleep can do for them.  Using myself as an example, I find my entire day devoted to school-related work (classes, projects, homework, etc.), plus extra curricula.  So when it is 11 pm and I have finally accomplished my day’s work, the last thing I want to go do go to bed and do another day’s work when I wakeup.  I want to have my hobbies squeezed into my schedule.  Unfortunately after online video watching, video games, social networking, etc., I find myself drifting off to sleep between 2 and 3 am.  My alarm set to 7:30 am gives gives me a range of 4 – 6 hours of sleep on weeknights.  My first approach to solving this sleep issue is constructing a weekly agenda with every 30 min allotted to some purpose.  The idea is to improve work efficiency during the day by not dawdling so there will be sufficient time for hobbies after work and time remaining for a good night’s rest.