Sleep Disorders In College Students

Many times people think they can accomplish more if they could eliminate so much sleeping time.  However, they are only hurting their productivity if they lose sleep.  Two articles deal with the issue of sleep deprivation.  The College Student Journal published an article about the grade-point average of college students and sleep length, while U.S. News & World Report produced an article dealing with the lack of

Are you tired and having trouble paying attention in class? Focusing on tasks at hand? Or just completely being overall unproductive? The average college student is deprived at least two full hours asleep each night according to “College Tidbits” a website designed to promote healthy lifestyles and productivity in daily college life. These results were pooled from multiple surveys done over hundreds of campuses throughout the United States. Today, I hope to persuade you to fight the statistics and get those extra two hours of sleep. Do what it takes to get the full seven to nine hours that is suggested by the Mayo Clinic. I will discuss two problems. Why college students are not

Students need a good amount of sleep to be able to focus and get through the school day. Students ability to function during school is impacted by the quantity, regularity, and quality if their sleep (Wolfson 1). The quality of sleep is not only important for the students but it is also important for the teachers. The quality of sleep affects the way students and teachers act throughout the day. Daytime sleepiness and poor sleep quality on school days in students and teachers may comprise school and work performance (De Souza 5). Since students and teachers stay up so late at night, they tend to be very tired during the day. It is important to get sleep but it is more important to get a good sleep. There is not really a point in sleeping or trying to get sleep when it is not a good sleep because no matter what students will be tired during the day. While the quality of sleep is important, so is the amount of sleep a student or teacher is getting on school nights.

Sleep affects grades in more ways than one or two or even three. It affect how people feel, think, and act (Gruber,2013). This states that people that have less sleep behave differently than people that get the recommended amount of sleep for their age.They may be more likely to have mistakes in a class or job. They might even act different than they usually do. Sleep also has an affect of no motivation or effort in the work they do (Gruber,2013). This is important because this tells that the person that does not get enough sleep does not have much motivation or effort they put in to the work they perform.People with motivation tend to do things better than people that have none.

In the article Teachers,Students and Sleep, author Dave Stuart address the effects of different qualities of sleep have on students. Stuart covers the causes for poor sleep and the consequences this can have. The author repeatedly references the work of Harvard graduate Maria Konnikova, along with Shawn Stevenson who has a bachelor's degree, thus they appear to be reliable sources. Stuart cover the negative effects of artificial light close to sleep, and the many positive effects of regularity in other activities on the sleep cycle. Dave Stuart makes his readers reevaluate how important sleep is.

This source was produced by The Media Production Group at Dartmouth and Dr. Carl P. Thum, Director of the Dartmouth Academic Skills Center. Carl Thum himself works with students at Dartmouth University in which he provides coaching for students suffering from ADD and also leads various workshops, mini-courses, and coaching sessions for students as well. In this video, several students and faculty members are interviewed on the relationship between sleep and being a college student. In the various interviews, the students admit to the struggles they have in being able to function when suffering from sleep deprivation and how severely the lives are affected from it. The faculty members themselves admit to the several instances in which they have witnessed students suffer as a result of sleep deprivation in their testimonials. I will be incorporating this video to indicate the varying degrees at which sleep deprivation can affect students and will include quotes from other students in this video in order to create more relatability for the reader when hearing from students besides myself and how they have learned to address sleep.

One of the many arising problems of America’s students is they are becoming sleep deprived. The busy daily schedules of children and teens are not allowing them to get enough sleep. “Less sleep is unhealthy especially with the new research that as teenagers move through teenage years, they need increasing amounts of sleep. Nine hours per night is the necessary amount to avoid behaviors associated with sleep deprivation” (Final Report Summary, 2001). Among other things, sleep deprivation is causing students to sleep during class instead of being awake and aware. When the students are sleeping in class, they are not retaining information being taught to them. Researchers have now proven that

In Frank Bruni’s editorial, “Today’s Exhausted Superkids,” he talks about the lack of sleep present in many high school and college students. He attributes this loss in sleep to a variety of factors; although he seems to place the blame mainly on education. He blames the stress of getting good grades on the widespread lack of sleep. Throughout his article, Bruni used many studies and other writings to support his points.

According to clinical psychologist Reut Gruber, Short or poor sleep is a significant risk factor for poor academic performance that is frequently ignored.” In other words if students came to school with enough sleep, then they are able to concentrate more. They listen to teachers lecture carefully rather than taking nap during class. They will have more tendency to participate in class discussions and activities. This led to better grades and decreases the failure

Students are in search of an advantage over the crowd and go to vast lengths to achieve it. Sleep deprived students are the effect of high expectations. Schools such as Silicon Valley brought sleep experts to promote shut-eye. Frank Bruni states that back when he was in the 1980s, there was too much sleep, although today’s students are taking more AP classes, multiple extracurricular, and apply to every Ivies. The author lists numerous books written on the topic of student learning. In college, campus students face anxiety along with depression, they cope with minor setbacks that seem big. They also deal with panic a major factor in “acing the exam, burnishing the transcript, and keeping up with high achieving peers.” Wanting to pull their children off the fast track parents worry about getting them stuck behind. The author believes students should be given wiggle room to find passions, develop interests, and bounce back from failure. Bruni states kids should “tumble gently into sleep, which is a gateway, not an impediment, to dreams.” Students are exhausted from their daily schedules and lose sleep due to it, Bruni proves his point by discussing personal experiences, statistics from other schools, and works he’s read.

Students in high school struggle with sleep so seriously that medical professionals call it an epidemic, with 87% of students getting less than the recommended amount of sleep (Richter). It’s difficult to balance sports and extracurriculars with school and homework, and, come junior and senior year, college applications and jobs as well. All these activities in students’ lives leave them little time for a good night’s sleep. Unfortunately for them, sleep is actually crucial, as it has not only been shown to improve GPA, but also help students with memorizing information (Hershner). Not to mention that most high schools start classes early in the morning, with 29.9% of schools starting before 7:30 am, according to a 2012 survey (CDC). According

Almost every day high school students are waking up around six o’clock in the morning to get ready for school, some even earlier than that. Nearly every morning students are waking up without adequate sleep. If sleep is one of the most essential needs of the body in order to grow and develop, shouldn’t we be more aware of how much it affects students everyday performance? The ways in which students are affected by sleep-deprivation is precisely why school needs to start later.

Weaver from Oklahoma State University. According to the authors “the purpose of the present study was to determine if sleep deprivation and/or poor sleep quality in a sample of non-depressed university students was associated with lower academic performance” (Gilbert, Cameron. 295). The study was also made to determine the relationship between sleep deprivation, sleep quality, and academic performance (Gilbert, Cameron. 298). It was hypothesized that by the end of the study, participants who had higher levels of sleep deprivation and poorer sleep quality would have lower academic performance (as indicated by grade point average [GPA] and course incompletions—drops, withdrawals, and incompletes) than participants with little sleep deprivation and good sleep quality (Gilbert, Cameron. 298). By the end of the study, the authors discussed the results in the following narration:

Thesis Statement: When the projects, exams, and extra-curricular activities start to pile up on one another it seems as though there is not enough time in the day.  This is when college students tend to lose precious hours of sleep and the consequences can be costly.

Most high school students aren't getting enough sleep. Due to school starting early some of the high school students are only getting a few hours of sleep. When high school students don't get enough sleep during a school night they are most likely to perform poorly in school. Although this article has some major strengths, major weaknesses, and gaps, it still supports the reasoning of why high school students are sleep deprived and what are some of the things we can do to get enough sleep and have an excellent performance in school.