Sleep Deprivation of College Students

Sleep Deprivation of college students It is 11:30 in the morning and the lecture started half an hour ago. The classroom is still half empty. Although half of the class is here, they don’t look like awake. Most of them look like zombies. The above scenario is a common condition taken place in colleges. A research done by Tsui,YY, et al (2009) shows that two thirds of the participating students reported sleep deprivation. The poor sleep quality results in their zombie looks and poor attendants in lectures. Causes of Sleep deprivation

Deprival of sleep strongly affects college students’ studies and personal life. Why would students have sleep deprivation? There are two main causes. Change in lifestyle First of all, the change in lifestyle strongly deranges one’s sleeping pattern. When students in Hong Kong transit from secondary school to college, they are happy about not being controlled by their parents anymore. Since in secondary school, students have a lot of pressure from public exams and their worried parents. The parents force them to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

However, after they become college students, especially for those who are living in residence halls, they would be excited to get rid of the healthy lifestyle and doing whatever they like at night time. They can hang out with friends at midnight and have parties all night long. However, before the deadlines of assignments, students would burn the midnight oil, spending several nights to finish the assignments. When their work is done, they would use the whole day for sleeping to remedy the seized sleeping hours. The upsetting schedule of sleep would induce a strong negative influence in students’ sleep-wake pattern.

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Once the pattern is disrupted, it will cause varies of problems towards one’s life. Pressure Another main cause of this issue is pressure. With no doubt, stress can easily keep students awake at night. College students in Hong Kong are engaged with sorts of activities, including competitions, extra-curriculum activities and part-time jobs. They want to make everything prefect, which would definitely elicit stress. It would undoubtedly make them awake at night, or even worse, they may suddenly wake up in the midnight for several times.

Some of my university friends are suffering from sleep deprivation because of stress. Sometimes, they are afraid of cannot wake up on time in the morning for examinations, resulting in them cannot fall asleep even after two hours of staying on bed. Effects of sleep deprivation Sleep deprivation affects college students in many aspects. Two main effects are health problems and poor work performance. Health problem Sleep deprived has a strong influence in health. Some of the students would try to take drugs or use alcohol to help them inducing sleep. It would be likely to have a risk of addiction.

Moreover, this sleeping problem will easily drive to have increasing blood pressure tremors, aching muscles, headaches, memory loss and the like. Furthermore, Melnick (2010) stated that “Researchers found that for each hour of lost sleep, levels of psychological distress rose by 5% in nearly 3,000 17-to-24-year-olds who were followed for 12 to 18 months. Overall, short sleepers were 14% more likely to report symptoms of psychological distress on a standard test, compared with people who got adequate sleep. “Most of the students would use coffee to help them stay awake at night so that they can study hard. However, it is not a wise choice.

Although caffeine could be helpful for keeping people energetic during days and nights, it would cause long term impacts to their health. Poor work performance Withholding of sleep also leads to a poor work performance, it will seriously affect the performance of tests and part-time work. During sleeping, brain would review and organize the memories, it also allows body to take a rest. However, if students deprive their sleeping, it would not allow their brain to have proper re-organizing, which would conduct poor performance. What is more, a sleep deprived student will easily have delay in reaction and tendencies to make mistakes.

On the contrary, according to Dean, Lowry and Manders (2010),” College students mindful of the importance of healthy sleep patterns may be able to improve their GPAs. ” (P. 16). Students would definitely feel better and maximum your brain functions if they had a nice quality of sleep. Way to reduce sleep deprivation Sleep deprivation brings college students dozens of severe negative impacts. How can we get rid of it? The method is easy, change your lifestyle! It is suggested that adults should have seven to nine hours of sleep for a day. Students should avoid staying up all the night and have better planning for their time.

Time management is vital for everyone, not only students. It is understood that going to college probably is the first time students will be in charge of their sleep habits. According to Sheehan, Unseth and Xiong (2010), “Try to go to bed and wake up at approximately the same time every day. A regular sleep pattern increases your alertness during the day. ” (P. 3). Going to college would be a very good chance for students to learn to control their life and time. Apart from this, some students may have trouble sleeping. Nonetheless, this is not an excuse to become an all-nighter.

The suggestion for them to have a nice night sleep is relax! If there is a lot in their mind, including school works, relationships, jobs and the like, it is hard to fall asleep. Students can jot down the things on their mind and then forget about it! If there is a noise problem, students may try to use a white-noise machine to block the noise from the resident hall. “Sleep helps repair your body, reduce stress, improve memory, and keep you healthy. Lack of sleep can literally affect every aspect of your life. “ (Sheehan, Unseth and Xiong, 2010, P. 2) After knowing all those bad impacts f sleep deprivation, students should get away your bad habit of staying up late and oversleeping considering having a better health. Let’s change the lifestyle and maintain a healthy life! References Dean, K. , Lowry, M. , Manders, K. (2010). The link between sleep quantity and academic performance for the college student. Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota. Retrieved from https://www. psych. umn. edu/sentience/files/Lowry_2010. pdf Melnick, M. (2010, September 2). Lack of sleep linked with depression, weight gain and even death. Times. Retrieved from http://healthland. ime. com/2010/09/02/lack-of-sleep-can-cause-depression-weight-gain-and-even-death/ Sheehan, E. , Unseth, T. , Xiong, M. (2010). Sleep deprivation of college students in western. Retrieved from http://www. westerntc. edu/writingcenter/pdf/samples/Business%20and%20Technical/SheehanEtAl. pdf Song, S. (2011). Sleeping your way to the top. College Writing Skills with Readings, 8, 729-731. Tsui, YY. , Et al. (2009). A study on the sleep patterns and problems of university business students in Hong Kong. Pubmed gov. Retrieved from http://www. ncbi. nlm. nih. gov/m/pubmed/198926541

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