BY KATIE BECKER

In print | Published March 4, 2010 — Updated March 05, 2010 00:23

It’s nearly the end. One more day, and a glorious break will be upon us. Thank God — I’ll finally be able to get some sleep. I hope that’s what you’re thinking too. And I hope that you’ll sincerely follow through on that desire to get more sleep during break. Chances are that you need to catch up on sleep more than you need to hang out until 4 a.m. with your friends from home or catch up on all the seasons of Lost. Yet, we sometimes don’t follow through with our intention to sleep more once we have the opportunity, which probably has to do with our habit of placing little value on sleep during the semester. Spring break is a chance to change those sleeping habits, however, and that can transform the rest of your semester.

One of my professors recently mentioned that whenever you talk to students about sleeping more, the usual response involves eye rolling. Understandably so. If we thought we could afford to sleep more, we probably would. Sadly, we all too often feel that we don’t have enough time to get all of our work done and sleep as much as we need to, let alone as much as we’d like. Then there’s the old scenario I first heard as a first-semester freshman: sleep, work or friends — pick two of these options. When we’re not working and still not sleeping, it’s probably because we want to retain some semblance of humanity by at least maintaining old friendships and maybe even building new ones. It gets tiring in a non-physical sense to work all day and then just go to sleep once everything’s done. I’m not a robot, and I don’t enjoy behaving like an academic work machine. That’s where friends come in. So I’m not going to begrudge anyone for missing out on some sleep due to social time; that’s important as well. But, that gets us back to where we started and I still haven’t offered any solutions.

What follows may seem like radical, daring or simply reckless advice from a second-semester senior finished with her major requirements with the added bonus of being able to pass-fail every course this semester if necessary, but I assure you, there’s some sense to it. Go to sleep. Do not finish that problem set, paper, reading or whatever it is that is keeping you up (yes, even kick your friends or significant other out of the room). Just go to sleep when you are tired. Don’t make excuses and don’t cite deadlines, just go to sleep. Simple, right?

No, not really, and I won’t lie to you. The above advice actually involves a decent amount of planning and organization. For example, to take that advice, you actually have to start your paper, problem set, lab report, Phoenix column, etc., more than a day in advance. When you don’t leave yourself any time for your assignments, of course it feels like sleep isn’t an option. You also have to make socializing enough of a priority such that you spend time with people during the day and not just after all your work for the day is done. Yes, it sucks that we have to schedule time for our friends. But you are doing all of these things for a very good reason, an investment that will reward your efforts at organization with wonderful returns.

Other than sweet dreams and feeling rested, what’s so damn wonderful about sleep that you need to go to some trouble to plan your life around it? Well, you may or may not be freaked out about midterms right about now. It turns out that not getting enough sleep hinders your ability to concentrate, make decisions and complete tasks. Conversely, sleeping enough will improve all of those abilities, which will in turn significantly improve your efficiency while studying for midterms. So even though you might worry that getting more sleep will deprive you of necessary studying time, you’ll make up for the time investment in sleep with increased efficiency while studying. Plus, improved concentration, decision-making and task completion sounds like the perfect recipe for successfully taking a midterm, which means that sleep holistically benefits your exam experience. Not only that, but memory consolidation also occurs during sleep. Sure, you might have stayed up two nights in a row studying for your midterm, but that’ll all be a waste if you don’t give your brain a chance to biologically process those memories and make that information available to you during your exam. Sleep also boosts your immune system, so that your body will be equipped to avoid whatever Swat plague is going around—which will clearly enable you to stay productive during those times, such as midterms, when you can’t afford to slow down.

If you’re still hard-pressed to dedicate another hour or two to sleep a night, there are at least some excellent benefits of napping that may be of interest to you. Short naps—preferably 10 to 20 minutes long, but certainly no longer than 30 minutes—can significantly increase alertness and performance and reduce mistakes and accidents in the period immediately following and up to several hours after the nap. Here’s the catch: Napping cannot replace normal nighttime sleep and you are still vulnerable to the negative effects of sleep deprivation, even if you are a committed napper. One such negative effect of sleep deprivation that is especially relevant to those devout nap-takers among you: You are more likely to be affected by sleep inertia, a period of grogginess and disorientation, for a longer period of time after awakening from your nap than someone who gets enough sleep at night. So naps aren’t a cure-all. They shouldn’t be considered a substitute for continuous nighttime sleep.

Now that you’re armed with information, go on break and get some sleep—not because you need to take midterms when you’re on break, but because you probably have a massive sleep debt. So take the next week to get rid of all that excessive sleepiness hanging around from the days of your poor sleep habits and then come back to Swat ready to sleep some more.

Katie is a senior. You can reach her at kbecker1@swarthmore.edu.

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