It’s a minute to 11:59 PM. You just typed in the last of your required 1000-something word paper. As you struggle to save the file and attach it to an e-mail, you think that perhaps the past two weeks shouldn’t have been spent drinking, lazing around, or doing org work. You tell yourself that next time, you will try to manage your time a little better. However, when the next time comes around, you do the same thing all over again.
This fight against time is a common scenario to many Ateneans. Stories like “I didn’t sleep because I needed to do a paper” or “I had to finish my readings” have become the type of stories that students narrate when asked about the night before. More and more have all-nighters as a common way for students to complete their requirements within a limited amount of time. It has been glorified in recent years as a form of academic, physical, and emotional strength too; however, ditching sleep to study for a test does much more harm than good.
Stories from the graveyard shift
The studying habits of students vary. Some revel in the nightlight and produce some of their best work there, while some prefer working during the day to get a good night’s rest. Here are some testimonies about the dreaded all-nighter:
There’s only so many hours in a day, and communications technology management sophomore Enzo Tan is determined to fill them all, even if sleep is the price he has to pay. He is a classic example of someone who does all-nighters consistently. Guesstimations round off his all-nighters to be at least five per month. He claims they are a result of him putting off his schoolwork, but he doesn’t resort to them just because he’s lazy. Rather, Enzo says that it’s because “people glorify filling up all 24 hours of the day.” He gets caught up in the proverbial rat race to become a model student. Especially, nowadays, that doesn’t just mean having perfect grades, but also having a quality point index (QPI) of 4.0, eight organizations, a part-time job, and being a social butterfly. He just resigns to being puyat or sleep deprived every other day.
On the other hand, psychology junior Gail Viaje says that if it weren’t for school work, she wouldn’t pull all-nighters at all. “Sometimes there's so much work to do na you can't just fit it all in a couple of hours,” she says, before describing the harrowing effects of sleep deprivation. Her eyes become sensitive to light and her back starts to hurt. She says it isn’t always like this, but it’s extremely painful when it happens. It puts her in a position that come the next day, she just cuts her classes. So in the end, what she does to fulfill her requirements, just makes her lose her opportunities to learn.
Finally, health sciences sophomore Miguel Dobles is a hard find in a school where cram culture is prevalent, especially, as he belongs to a theatre org that’s notorious for its seven-hour rehearsals. He admits to being a rarity in a sea of students who boast about their dark eyebags and lack of sleep. “People walk around and say, ‘I’m so [dead],’ ‘di ba? Or ‘I’m so tired. I didn’t sleep last night.’ Oh why? ‘I had a test,’” Miguel narrates, as he describes how people act around campus after an all-nighter. He mentions that time management is the key, and what he does is do everything two days before it’s due. He hopes that others will start doing the same. “[When] someone tells you they’re sleep deprived, you should be concerned,” he says, reminding people that this shouldn’t be the norm.
The bottom line
All-nighters may have become a staple of college life, but sacrificing sleep only impedes academic performance. While the immediate effects, such as drowsiness, are felt by many, the long term physiological ramifications of sleep deprivation are aplenty. It is a common fact that when we sleep, our body gets its much needed time to fix itself. Nighttime is when the body can not only rest up, but also heal itself, produce hormones, and combat diseases. So when our bodies lose that opportunity to do all those things, it ends up only being able to provide part of what we need to function properly.
A common example of this is that when we don’t sleep, our body’s ability and efficiency in running our immune system drastically decreases. This leaves the body being unable to recuperate and combat diseases or ailments (like the common cold or flu) during its much needed rest time. Constant sleep deprivation can lead to the prolongment of these and turn them into a much more painful experiences. Lack of sleep can also lead to long-term problems such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. While it doesn’t happen right away, over time, the pressure on an individual’s heart increases and it may lead to much more serious problems in the future.
Not only can all-nighters affect your physical health, but it can also make your memory less functional. According to Aileen Jimenez, a psychologist at the Loyola Schools Office of Guidance and Counseling (LSOGC), cramming information the night before the test will only activate your short-term memory, not long-term. This means that if you don’t immediately use the information stored in the short-term, it will just soon be forgotten. In short, depriving yourself of sleep to force-feed knowledge to your brain is often fruitless. “Feeling mo wala kang natutunan (you feel like you’re not learning anything), which defeats the purpose of studying,” she says.
Jimenez emphasizes the importance of sleep, because it is the period of time when our memories are being converted from short-term to long-term memory. In other words, sleeping helps reduce the amount of forgetting that can occur. So if you’re cramming for an exam, try to get at least a few hours of sleep. You’ll at least retain more of what you studied instead of staying up all night trying to learn everything, but forgetting them in the end.
Reality checks
For many of us, time management and getting enough sleep are not that easy when we have so much to get done. It even becomes inevitable to pull an all-nighter, especially when exams, presentations, and projects all seem to fall on the same week. Furthermore, many students choose to be active in organizations, which add to the stressful workload that they already have. And because many of us strive to be “magis” in the sense of just doing more, we sometimes end up taking more work than we can possibly handle.
Indeed, many of us sacrifice hours of sleep just to be able to check off everything in our to-do lists. However, overworking to the point of depriving ourselves of our basic needs will only lead to burnout. Jimenez explains the importance of learning how to say no. “[Saying no] is not very concrete but it's something…[that] students should learn. Napansin ko, parang kailangan nila laging may ginagawa (I noticed that students always need to have something to do).” She also mentions that before we start trying to do more that “it’s also good to pause and reflect [on] the meaning of what we do.” For her, there should always be a greater purpose in the things that we do, be it “for the society, for the country, [and] if they’re more spiritual, for God.”
When deadlines, hectic schedules, and exams start to get overwhelming, it’s easy to forget our basic needs. That is why self-care is one of the most important things college students can do for themselves. We know that prioritizing our own needs is not always easy to do—not everyone has the luxury to ditch work for a Netflix binge. But this doesn’t mean you can’t make time for yourself. Jimenez explains that self-care doesn’t have to be anything grand; it is just as effective even in small doses, such as eating your favorite food, walking around campus, or talking to a friend. It’s time that we stop glorifying sleepless nights and learn to slow down, take a break, and make time to do the things that we really enjoy.
To find out more about the effects of sleep deprivation:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/03/03/sleep-deprivation-effects.aspx
https://www.healthline.com/health/sleep-deprivation/effects-on-body
Graphic by Angelica Bacungan.