Save time to schedule sleep

With all that’s on our plates as students, it’s not difficult for us to occasionally put ourselves last and our responsibilities first. In the long run, this can become detrimental to our physical and mental health when we deny ourselves time to eat or rest. The recommended hours of sleep seven to nine hours, but college students tend to lack those hours. With tight deadlines on assignments, pulling an all-nighter is sometimes the only option. However, we as students, should be prioritizing our sleep. 

When students get more sleep, they have more energy to stay awake. For those who have morning classes at 8 or 9 a.m, it’s important to not miss any information, even though it seems the back of the lecture hall is more suited for sleeping. You don’t want to fall behind on any schoolwork and if you oversleep, it’s a missed lecture and unwritten notes. In addition it increases your productivity, making you get more done in a day. Sleep is nature’s caffeine and if you can get the recommended hours of sleep (7-9 hours,) you’ll be less inclined to spend your limited money on coffee and energy drinks. 

Sleep gives you a chance to take a break from studying homework. Naps excluded, getting the recommended hours of sleep lets you take a longer break from work and to ease stress. It may sound tempting to accomplish all your homework in one night in hopes of working ahead and not having to worry about assignments, but when you don’t set aside time for sleep, the assignments you tend to the next day won’t nearly have as much effort put into them as the ones where you stayed up all night.

The most important reason to get sleep is how it affects your overall physical and mental health. Sleeping gives your body a chance to replenish and restore itself, specifically the immune system which is crucial as cold and flu season is approaching. It also helps lowers the risk of heart disease and reduces inflammation. Sleep also improves your memory and cognition as well as lowering depression. Grades are important, but not as much as your health.

At one point or another, we will have to burn the midnight oil and sacrifice a few hours of sleep. However, this shouldn’t be the norm we follow. Falling into bed each night should be a priority and in order to get A’s, we need to first catch some Z’s.