Between getting involved, studying for midterms and maintaining social lives, sleep seems to be the last thing on some of our minds. Cutting down on sleep may eliminate the fear of missing out, but it can come with many consequences, according to the University Health Center at the University of Georgia.
The average college student gets about six hours of sleep a night, when eight hours is the ideal amount, according to the Huffington Post.
Although students like myself tend to cut down on sleep to finish homework in the late hours of the night, making a daily to-do list could be much more effective.
Think about it: if you have what you need to do and when laid out in front of you, wouldn’t it be that much easier to sit down and just do it?
Of course, no one can organize every second of their day. Plans change and assignments may take longer than expected. However, noting the most important parts of your day could help to regulate your sleep schedule.
Going to bed and waking up around the same times each day can help eliminate sleep deprivation, according to the University of Michigan’s Health Service. Setting a midnight bedtime may not be ideal on a Toads night, but going to sleep at 1 a.m. on weekdays and 5 a.m. on weekends can cause more damage than you think.
Other than causing you to feel tired, sleep loss can harm various aspects of your life. According to the University of Georgia, sleep deprivation can increase stress and lower your GPA, even if you’re losing sleep to study.
If you’re cutting back on sleep to make the grade, you may be surprised to see a decrease in your GPA. Lack of sleep can reduce concentration levels, causing students to zone out when writing papers or test poorly.
As if being cranky and having a decreased GPA isn’t bad enough, lack of sleep can also lead to weight gain. According to the University of Georgia, sleep deprivation affects certain hormone levels, increasing the desire to eat high calorie foods.
Though a fair amount of us experienced the “Freshman 15,” many of us were quick to consider ourselves victims of the cafeteria food instead of looking to our sleeping habits.
Sleep deprivation may seem to be the answer to our troubles much of the time. Cutting back on rest can allow us to study more and still have a social life, but over time, it causes damage that we may not always see.
In order to keep your GPA, weight and sanity in tact, try your best to create consistent study and sleep habits.
Organizing every minute of your day may not be the simplest task, especially if you like to procrastinate as much as I do.
Netflix, Tumblr and other technologies are much more entertaining than writing an English paper. But at the end of the day, will you be stressing about not finishing the Breaking Bad series or your midterm assignment?
