ScienceDaily: Nightly sleep is key to student success
“A multi-institutional team of researchers conducted the first study to evaluate how the duration of nightly sleep early in the semester affects first year college students end-of-semester grade point average (GPA). Using Fitbit sleep trackers, they found that students on average sleep 6.5 hours a night, but negative outcomes accumulate when students receive less than six hours of sleep a night. The results are available in the Feb. 13 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Previous studies have shown that total sleep is an important predictor for a broad range of health and performance outcomes. Sleep guidelines recommend teenagers get 8 to 10 hours of sleep every night. Many college students experience irregular and insufficient sleep.
David Creswell, the William S. Dietrich II Professor in Psychology and Neuroscience at the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, led a team of researchers to evaluate the relationship between sleep and GPA. College students often push themselves to achieve, and GPA is the important marker of academic success.
"Animal studies have shown how critical sleep is for learning and memory," said Creswell. Here we show how this work translates to humans. The less nightly sleep a first year college student gets at the beginning of the school term predicts lower GPA at the end of the term, some five to nine weeks later. Lack of sleep may be hurting students' ability to learn in their college classrooms."”
My Takeaways:
Sleep is critical for memory consolidation and the process of learning. Repeated studies in the past have shown the importance of sleep towards educational success and achievement. The age old saying of it being better to sleep the night before than spend the night studying (given that you had studied before this day of course) is true!
Perhaps one of the best ways to apply this into our lives is finding a consistent quality and quantity of sleep every night. Sleep is important when and how much we get every night.
Signs of inadequate sleep can result in frequent daytime naps or sleepiness, general fatigue or insomnia at night.
How does sleep affect your studies?
Full article is here!
#Sleep #Studying #Student
thank you for the thread, sunny!
i remember always struggling with sleep when i was studying because i'd be up worried about exams and things. it definitely helps when you get a good nights sleep though and as time went on during my studies i realised the importance of sleep!
best time of the day
@sunnyWriting4806
@tommy
Hi Tommy! Thank you for replying. Definitely, I remember when my study sessions would be so inefficient because I was so tired all the time, hence making me stay up at night. This would just feed into the vicious cycle of sleep and study! Once I set myself a consistent sleep schedule everything felt much better :)
@sunnyWriting4806
Hey hey sunny! Thank you so much for taking the time to put together this post! I have been really enjoying your science daily series.
After reading the article I can definitely see how the transition to college and sleep can be really challenging. You no longer have someone telling you to go to bed, as well as you have to manage your studies, academics, work, and a million other things. There never seems to be enough hours in the day to accomplish everything you want to do. It can be easy to slowly start letting your bed time get later and later without even realizing it. I have found it hard to keep a consistent routine. On top of stress and sleep disorders that people face the lack of sleep can really be a challenge for students.
With the lack of it really can affect your studies, you mood, mental health, relationships, how you feel, basically all aspects of your life. With the lack of sleep you are not able to give your brain process the days information, so lack of sleep can affect memory. It even starts to affect you physical health. All-around it affects so many things. So trying to stay onto of getting sleep can be really important especially during your school years.
Some times it can be easy to stay up late and not get the rest that your body and mind need. However it actually is more beneficial to taking that time to rest.
Thanks again sunny!
*shares cookies and kiwis*
@Estrellitaa
a really great summary! Thank you for that. Definitely sleep is super important and there’s so many factors that might cause it to go awry during college which can include the greater degree of independence one gets during college. Though we may not realize it, it plays a super important role in our learning as well!
