All-nighter consequences show up in class

We see it all the time.

A sleep-deprived student walks into class after a very late night, clutching a hot cup of coffee or an energy drink as his only hope for winning the tough struggle he is about to face — fighting off sleep.

Julia Vann | Daily Trojan

With dark, heavy bags under his eyes, the student begins to flutter is eyelids, and his head begins to droop. It seems like he is going to lose this struggle, but suddenly he perks his head up, quickly realizing he was a hair’s length away from giving in.

After an hour more of fighting the urge to doze, the student slowly walks out of the classroom. He won the war against sleep, but lost the ability to take anything meaningful away from the class.

“It’s almost like watching a drama unfolding. I see how [sleep-deprived] students valiantly fight to stay awake in class. It’s a battle between the desire to sleep and the desire to stay awake and pay attention,” said Robert English, a USC professor of international relations.

It’s obvious that many students today are sleep-deprived. An October survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that only 28 percent of college students reported getting sufficient sleep at night.

This can amount to a decrease in academic performance and overall health. Ultimately, the administration, not just the students, need to address the problem of sleep deprivation.

With Leavey Library full of students throughout the night studying for upcoming midterms and writing papers before the sun comes up, homework is one of the main explanations students give for sleep deprivation.

The copious amounts of reading and need to understand important concepts take up time usually intended for sleep.

“A lot of the material takes a long time to understand. It is one thing to just read it, but it’s another thing to understand it,” said Sukhveer Sandhu, a junior majoring in biomedical engineering.

Some students may end up enduring all-nighters because of procrastination and a lack of proper time management.

With so many distractions constantly surrounding students — whether it’s friends, parties, cell phones or computers — students will almost never be in a situation where a potential diversion does not exist.

These distractions, combined with poor time management, usually lead to long nights and sleep deprivation.

Professors are able to tell when a student is struggling to stay awake in class. The constant yawning and the clear display of a lack of concentration are dead giveaways to most professors.

In smaller classes a student who is struggling to stay awake can potentially be a class distraction and take away from the learning of others, as well as impairing the professor’s ability to concentrate and teach effectively.

“For many, this is an entirely new environment, and they will need practice to balance everything,” said Daniel Durbin, a USC professor of communication. “A professor definitely notices when a student is trying not to doze off. Sometimes it is a distraction to everyone including me, and I may respond to it, but other times it is better to concentrate on the subject being discussed.”

Other professors point to the similarity between students and professors in terms of their jobs and environments.

“As long as the [sleep-deprived] student is not hindering the learning experience of others, I don’t really react to it … Professors are working around the clock too. We’re constantly in meetings and we’re making presentations at various seminars which results in staying up late working,” English said. “Sometimes some of the subjects we’re listening too in such seminars may not be as interesting as we thought and sleep begins to catch up with us as well.”

Although fighting sleep in class is a big challenge for students, doctors point out that sleep deprivation may have larger health consequences.

Constant sleep deprivation over time can lead to a higher risk of cancer, heart disease, obesity and diabetes.

Although each individual needs different amounts of sleep to function, an average adult is expected to get between seven and nine hours of sleep, and anything less than six hours of sleep per night causes risk factors to rise.

“We’re shifting to a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week society, and as a result we’re increasingly not sleeping like we used to,” said Najib T. Ayas, an expert in sleep disorders from the University of British Columbia in an interview with the Washington Post. “We’re really only now starting to understand how that is affecting health, and it appears to be significant.”

To address sleep deprivation on campus, the university must take a two-fold approach.

First, a campus-wide initiative must be made by the university to educate and promote the potential detrimental health effects stemming from sleep deprivation.

This initiative should focus on educating the student population on how important sleep is for their bodies.

Second, the university should hold more time-management seminars in which strategies are taught on how to be time efficient and thus increase the time students have to sleep.

Although the university offers a plethora of orientation seminars for incoming freshman, few students have any opportunity in the next four years to get valuable advice and tips on time management.

As of now, most students do not put sleep high up on their list of priorities. Many see it as something that must be sacrificed or curtailed in favor of academics.

This relaxed perception of sleep must be changed in order for students to consider sleep deprivation more seriously.

We all want to sleep. We all need to sleep.

Let’s try to shift our priority lists and give importance to sleeping more hours.

Trust me, you won’t regret it.

Angad Singh is a sophomore majoring in international relations and communications.