The Importance Of Sleep On College Students

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Have you ever gone a day without much sleep and felt like you are just not quite yourself? You may feel sluggish, unmotivated, or even grumpy. A lack of sleep can totally change the way a college student acts and thinks. Sleep is like food for the brain, and without enough of it, our cognitive abilities will greatly be affected. However, with colleges, such as Western, having a class start time of 8:30am, is this problem of lacking sleep easy to solve? Students tend to live very busy lives. From school orientated tasks such as readings and exams, to part-time jobs, or time permitting, sports and recreation. With so many things on the go, it is often very hard for students to accomplish everything while obtaining the daily recommended amount …show more content…
Even one night of poor sleep has been shown to reduce empathy and emotional recognition; “thus, poor sleep may stop understanding between relationship partners, creating more opportunity for conflict.” (Gordon & Chen, 2014). The reason for this is that after a person lacks sleep, their information processing is impaired and they can no longer read a person’s emotional expressions properly during conflict. (National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, 2012). Therefore, sleep plays a crucial role in maintaining healthy and positive relationships.
Not only can sleep affect college student’s relationships with peers and friends, it can also create conflict between students and their professors. For example, if a student is overtired and disagrees with a professor, they may overreact to a problem and take it out on the professor negatively influencing their professional relationship and affecting one’s academic performance. In conclusion, it is extremely evident how essential sleep is for college students and their relationships with
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However, in research by Boergers, Gable, & Owens, “students reported no change in the number of hours they spent engaged in athletics, extracurricular activities, and homework after the schedule change was implemented.” (2014). In addition to this, the article continues on to mention that a considerable amount of students no longer felt too tired to actually complete their homework after the class start time was changed. Therefore, a bump back in class start times could indeed improve student’s grades as they have more energy to do homework and study after a long day at

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