You may not know it, but college students average about six to seven hours of sleep, which is less than the seven to nine hours recommended for young adults. Not many people think about how negatively impactful this is to a student’s brain that has to go through not only their workload but other things that they are a part of and involved in on a campus. Not enough sleep leads to sleep deprivation which affects academic performance, health emotionally and physically, and overall alertness and functioning. 

A significant amount of students involve themselves with some type of extracurricular activities, whether that may be sports, clubs, or other things they have to keep in mind. I myself am part of various clubs that require time and increased workload so I know from experience the type of pressure extracurriculars give to us students from doing other things such as our homework. With the balance between academics and extracurriculars, time management must be key to figuring out a good sleep schedule, but unfortunately this is just as difficult for students. With various majors and workloads, students are having a hard time balancing their worklife with their own life that they have besides being a student. A significant number of students also have outside jobs that they need to maintain to be able to support themselves financially for tuition, room and board, and the necessities. This prohibits academic learning to an extent and does not allow students to reach their full potential in their academics. Juggling all of these things while being a full-time student doesn’t allow students to get the sleep they need in order to do well in their academics. Scholarships play a huge part in this too as students are wanting and needing to maintain a certain level of academics so that they don’t lose the aid and scholarships that they have gotten, leaving them with a huge amount of pressure and expectation to always do well and leaving little amount of. 

Ian Esperon, a sophomore EMU student gives us insight on his sleeping habits and involvement that affects his sleep. Esperon shares “My sleeping habits are very poor as I only average about four to six hours a night”…”Being involved in many things such as clubs and having to also work on school work and go to work outside of school keeps me up at night”. He also comments that “staying up messes with my stomach and leads to my bad eating habits..I just start munching and don’t watch what I eat.” Esperon says that micronaps help with this struggle as it gives him energy and is a good way to make him feel energized. 

The priority of sleep should always be the first thing in mind when you are a student juggling work with school and with extracurricular activities. Whenever you are able to sleep and have free time you should always think about making time for yourself and sleeping when time allows.