Boing Boing: Coinciding with the beginning of the US school year, researchers at UCLA published a study last week showing a correlation between lack of sleep and poor academic performance. Some 500 high schoolers kept two-week diaries of their sleep habits, how well they understood and participated in classroom work, and their scores on assignments and tests. The ones who slept less did less well in school.
10 comments:
Here is the trick. I would love to get 8 hours of asleep a night and I know that I would feel better, have more energy and do better in my classes and assignments. The begged question is. When am I actually going to do these things if I am sleeping 1/3 of the day away? The issue for me has to be efficiency of work in the other 16 hours in a day. I get up and start my day at 7:00 which means I have to be in bed by 11:00pm. To achieve 8 hours of sleep, I must come home from crew and go straight to bed. This means I must complete all the day’s work during the day. This has not been an ability I have been able to master. Therefore I suffer with lack of sleep. But at least I get things done, and I am probably losing some quality in my work because of it.
I feel the article may have some factual information to it but honestly I can function on little amounts of sleep. I think that the study is a little limited with no statistics of the people researched etc. no raw numbers. If the study was expanded I feel like a more rounded study would occur.
For some part, I agree that enough hours of sleeping make one energetic and focused during class time. Just by thinking of my mind being very clear and concentrated when I got to sleep more than 8 hours, I could totally see the point that researchers are making. On the other hand, I disagree with the claim that deprivation in sleeping results in bad performance at school. Well, maybe it will happen in high school. However, in college, things get different. I believe that rushing to finish assignments during breaks between classes just to sleep more will result in worse scenario. So, I think that it is better to stay up night to do work efficiently, if necessary, and have more sleep time during weekend.
Who would have guessed? Lack of sleep causes poor performance in school. The idea of having classes start later is an excellent idea. From personal experience Ive found that people tend to go to sleep at around the same time independent of when their first class is the next morning so if schools setback their starting times students could get more sleep.
Though I see the merits of additional sleep in the college theater world, I don't see how this is a possibility. When we have crew and homework there is no time for getting sleep. The constant reminder is almost painful because it's not that we don't want more sleep we just don't have the time. If the possibility for 8 hours of sleep a night was real then I'm sure most drama kids would take it. The reality os it's just never going to happen.
This article was basically common sense repeated in a more scientific and verbose form. You feel better if you get more sleep. I sleep as much as I can. The amount of work that I have to get done that day basically dictates the amount of sleep I can get. Less work equals more sleep. It's kind of obvious.
We've all seen articles and heard statistics about this: "Sleep more, you'll do better in school!" But who writes these articles? People with jobs who go to work for eight hours, accomplish a few things, and then come home and forget about their career until they go to work again the next day. But the time when teens do all their growing is also the time when we are most overloaded. We go to school... and then are expected to take part in extracurriculars - clubs, sports, volunteering - in fact, we're frowned upon when we don't. On top of these extracurriculars, we must finish our homework every night and master the topics being covered in eight different classes. And somehow we are expected to get eight hours a sleep at night. It's not going to happen. Society is hypocritical; it tells us we don't do enough and then is upset when we "do too much." If you want us to get good grades and get our assignments in on time, give us caffeine. We'll be just fine.
I'd be interested in seeking how long each participant was sleeping. Freshman year we learned that it matters how long you sleep because of your rem cycle. We learned that it would be better to sleep 3 hours rather then 4 to get a better night sleep. this article dint account for that.
(I believe that) There is a cultural consensus in the school of drama--and people will likely disagree with me--that less sleep is better. That getting enough sleep means that you aren't working hard enough, that you don't care enough, that you aren't good enough. Because you can't possibly sleep enough and still excel, right? Wrong. I doubt there is anything--ok, maybe one project a semester--that actually requires, literally requires, pulling an all-nighter. Time management and productive use of time, and being able to take a small step back to see a slightly bigger picture, allow one to accomplish what needs to be done, and get enough sleep. (And yes, even have a social life).
Once school really gets underway, I remember almost half of the students in classes being asleep, and also half of classes being sick. Taking the time to take care of yourself--which includes sleep--is an excellent preventative measure for sickness, which incidentally sets you back further anyway. Also, the work you do while sleep-deprived is at a much slower rate anyway, and it could be argued you don't even accomplish more, taking quality and quantity into account, by forcing yourself to work past when your body is telling you it needs rest.
Do we have too much work? Probably. The 'normal' working world is 8 hours each weekday, and we typically do more than that, with additional time on weekends. Even the theatre world, or the medical world, where people work shifts up to 24 hours, have those shifts scheduled in a way that allows them to incorporate hobbies, a home life, and perhaps even children, into their life. People who DO work as long as we do *choose* to do that, it's not the norm and, importantly, it's not the expectation.
But that doesn't mean we can't work within the system, get shit done, and still not be sleep deprived (which does have some serious health consequences when sustained over a long period of time, like say, 4 years).
Lack of sleep..........story of our lives. I like that if I get 8 hours of sleep, I will get better grades. That actually is my goal. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening. My number one goal is to stay at CMU so having to go without sleep in order to get my work done is my life. So, I choose to embrace my lack if sleep life and make the best of it.
Post a Comment