It is 11:00 on a Tuesday. You have 3 unfinished assignments and a math test tomorrow. You’re sitting, just staring at your computer, hoping that somehow you will become all prepared and caught up in this one night, and that this extra bit of studying will be the difference between a B and an A.
According to the Sleep Foundation, you could actually be studying your way to a lower grade. Research shows that sleep deprivation has a similar effect to being intoxicated, making it nearly impossible to focus on tasks like catching up on work or studying. For the average high school student, who is part of an activity after school like sports, arts, or music, sleep is often put in the back of their minds and is treated more as a luxury than something that needs to be done at a certain time. This is harmful to the studying that needs to be done in order to succeed in school because sleep acts as a “save button” for the brain. When you learn new information in class, that info is stored in the part of your brain called the hippocampus. Although this is the case, your brain does not begin to solidify this information until you enter REM sleep.
Studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that teenagers should be getting anywhere from 8-10 hours of sleep every day. This mark is only hit by around 25% of the high school students. This helps show that sleep is being moved to the back burner and is becoming less important. Kids think that getting an extra hour of studying at night will lead to them getting an A or just bumping their grade up enough. This is not the case, as discussed earlier, and 75% of teenagers around the world are suffering from not getting enough sleep, and are therefore not doing their best work in school each day.
Sleep definitely affects many students’ days.
“I definitely notice when I don’t get enough sleep. I can’t really function the next day in class, and it just makes the entire day not fun. So yeah, it’s definitely very important to get enough sleep every night,” Luca Matos said.
Sleep is a vital part of the life of everyone in and out of school, especially that of student athletes who have lots on their plate, so that they can confidently move through school and navigate all of the hardships and pressure that come with high school to the absolute best of their abilities.
