A Sleeping Lifestyle

Charlie Tusa

Mendenhall

English 1101

10/8/2017

A Sleeping Lifestyle

Have you ever gone to class and just could not keep your eyes open? Teachers calling you out, but you cannot help yourself. Well I bet you didn’t get an adequate amount of sleep the night before, or you are just stuck in an inhumane boring class. Sleep is very important in retaining information, I think. Or it can have little bit to do with your performance grade wise, because some college students rarely sleep enough and still pass their courses. It also could be a mixture of both, some college students can handle being exhausted and some just plain cannot. How does sleep disturbances and sleeping habits affect the lifestyle of a college student?

My first source is from a study conducted on graduating students from the school of Arts, Commerce and Science College in the Sangli district of Maharashtra, India. After developing a questionnaire to determine what sleep must do with overall performance in the college students, they gave it to 900 students. The study was split between 426 male and 474 female college students, with questions asking from age all the way to smoking habits. To conclude the result of the study, the average amount of sleep hours was 7.3. Also, multiple sleep disturbances were mentioned including sleeping pills, nightmares, and daytime naps. With about 92% of college students reporting a sleep disturbance and the other 18% not reporting any type of sleep disturbance. Students that slept at least 7 to 9 hours reported few sleep disturbances while they were common in students sleeping less than 9 hours. The most severe of sleep deprivation was found in students in the age group of 20-22 years old. Another contradicting result is that sleep disturbances were more common in students not taking advantage of the college lifestyle, while you would think it would be the other way around. Students who regularly exercised and regularly ate three substantial meals a day also had a low amount of sleep disturbances recorded. To finalize the study, sleep disturbances are extremely common in college life’s.    

My next source is from a rural university in the southern part of the United States. There was a study conducted on 191 undergraduate students, 95 males and 96 females. The was a wide range in ages, from 17 all the way to 55. Also, to differ from my first source, this one includes race. With a high majority, 82% were White, and about 13% were African American. The college students were questioned on a scale of 0 to 16 on sleep quality. With 0 indicating good sleep quality, and 16 indicating very poor sleep quality. After the testing, only 11% had a score of 0-1, 73% had a score of 2-8, and 15% had a score of 9-16. Surprisingly, they found out that gender has an effect, with more of female students had difficulty falling asleep. Also, 73% of the students have recorded some sort of sleep disturbance, happening more often with females. The most showing category is women falling asleep within 11-30 minutes, difficulties falling asleep period, morning tiredness, and waking up too early.  To conclude, this study has suggested that sleep quality not sleep quantity has a greater effect on college students.