I can’t pinpoint the exact date when I realized that I had seriously screwed up my sleep schedule. In high school, the fact that I had to wake up early every day kept me on track. Much like rumble strips on a highway, if I veered off course, early mornings were there to guide me back. The transition to college was like taking the exit ramp to an under-maintained road that led only to sad feelings. The guides were gone, and I found myself going to bed later and later and later. Needless to say, I did not practice good “sleep hygiene.”
Before I knew it, I was well on my way to being sleep deprived. According to the Centers for Disease Control, adolescents should get eight to nine hours of sleep daily, which adds another notch to the long list of ways people ignore the CDC. In all seriousness, sleep deprivation has many consequences, such as impairing one’s ability to learn new material, interact with others and stay healthy — consequences that I can attest to firsthand.
On the worst days of being sleep deprived, I would skip classes. When I actually tried to go to my early morning classes, I was completely unable to focus on the lectures. Taking naps during the evening became a tradition, one that actually made my situation worse by delaying my real bedtime.
Most Northwestern students are familiar with this feeling. Pulling all-nighters is one of the quintessential college experiences, such as climbing the roofs of various buildings and drinking (hopefully not in that order), but that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. In fact, the same CDC source reports that nearly half of all adolescents involuntarily fall asleep during the day. It’s a pretty common problem, and the prevailing solution is to just ride it out, which is fine because missing some sleep every once in a while is OK.
However, let’s be honest. Judging from the statistics, as well as my personal experiences, a lot of us have bad sleeping habits. Thankfully, we’re young, and fixing them is not usually an issue. If you think your sleep habits are under control, read no further. For the rest of us, realize that the consequences of sleep deprivation build up the longer you keep them up. The problem is cyclical: Bad sleep habits lead to bad sleep, which leads to worse sleep habits. At my worst, I was going to sleep at 4 a.m. on a regular basis.
In retrospect, I have nobody to blame but myself. I am writing this both as a reflection of my personal experience, as well as a cautionary tale to others. It’s easy to blame classwork, group projects or extracurricular activities for your lack of sleep, but I think those reasons are cop-outs. Good sleep habits require only that a minute amount of effort go into effective time-management skills. That means you ought to stop procrastinating. You should stop doing homework the day or even two days — that’s still not enough — before it’s due! Not having access to professors or TAs greatly increased the time I spent working on said assignments and was my No. 1 cause of poor sleep hygiene.
Obviously, if you have another external cause that is preventing you from getting a good nights sleep (excessive amounts of stress, mental or physical issues), see a medical professional about it. Otherwise, your best bet would probably be to follow the CDC’s tips on good sleep practices. The two I found most useful were to maintain a consistent sleep schedule and to not use electronics in bed or before sleeping. If these are habits you already have, it will be hard to fix them, but, trust me, a good night’s sleep is worth it.
Michael Wang is a McCormick sophomore. He can be reached at [email protected]. If you want to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].
