While the College Sleeps

With the multitude of freedoms that college students are exposed to in college, one thing they never get enough of is sleep.

Although sleep-deprived students have gotten used to subsisting on caffeine and catnaps, new studies equating fatigue with poor academic performance have inspired some Massachusetts schools to issue wake up calls.

Some have even launched campaigns with the message: “Want A’s? Get Z’s.”

According to Boston.com, “Wellesley College spreads the word by throwing dorm pajama parties with tea and popcorn; Tufts University passes out sleep masks, ear plugs and a CD of relaxation tracks.” And at MIT, parents are urged to be on the lookout for late-night emails from their offspring.

“For college students, sleep is the most dispensable thing,” reports Dr. Vanessa Britto, health services director at Wellesley. “Most people feel it’s a badge of honor. ‘I didn’t sleep. Parentheses, aren’t I great?’” Dr. Britto believes students need to know “that pulling an all-nighter is the equivalent of driving drunk and is detrimental to their reaction time and memory.”

That’s all well and good, but if you document the activities on any given night in a college dorm, you’d find that playing video games, gambling, socializing online, watching TV—occupies most of the students’ time, followed by studying until who knows when. Sleep happens when they run out of options.

Tufts freshman Kelsey Barton says that she’s averaged about three hours of sleep a night so far, because there’s so much going on, and “I don’t want to miss out.”

Deborah Lambert writes the Squeaky Chalk column for Accuracy in Academia.

Deborah Lambert