How often have you heard the phrase, “I don’t get enough sleep”?

We’ve all heard it before in our lives and some of us probably have used it to describe ourselves. With midterms wrapping up at Pace, some students have stayed awake for long periods of time on only a couple hours of sleep. This is not healthy to say the least (coming from the person who stayed up for almost 23 hours straight just two weeks ago).

On average, the human body requires about eight hours of sleep to properly function but when you factor in studying for classes and staying up to finish papers, that number can drop dramatically to as low as two hours. In the extreme cases some students have just decided to not go to sleep at all.

So what are some of the negatives aspects of losing sleep? For one, your ability to learn and retain new information decreases, along with a lack of visual attention, interpreting facial expressions wrong, and overall crankiness occurs. None of these traits are beneficial to anyone but, especially college students.

Sleep deprivation can reflect on your grades as well and not just your physical and mental well-being. Imagine staying up all night trying to finish a paper only to realize you have an exam the following morning for another class. To try your best to get a good grade on that test, you cram as much as you can until the early hours of the morning. Most likely you won’t do well on the test because your body needs to sleep and your brain won’t remember all of the information you’re trying to store all at once. Studies have shown that students who do get enough sleep perform better in their classes as opposed to someone who isn’t.

While studying for classes and writing papers are apart of why students lose sleep, they aren’t the only factors. FOMO, or fear of missing out, is a very real thing that students struggle with. Nobody wants to miss out on what their friends are doing or the fun event that’s happening on campus. Everybody wants to be doing something. Very few college kids are content with staying in their dorms after finishing their work. We all want to go on adventures, go to a party, see the volleyball game, and see what stupid thing our friends are going to do now’ it’s part of the culture we live in.

What are solutions to this problem? The main and most obvious solution is to go to bed early and don’t pull all-nighters with your friends. Another tactic to use is to actually limit how many naps you take and for how long. If you are going to take a nap it should be before 3 p.m. and shouldn’t be for no more than an hour. Avoid caffeine in the afternoon and at night also, as it can stay in your body longer than you think. If you’re having a hard time going to sleep, get out of bed and do something relaxing that doesn’t include your phone or another electronic device.

Sleepless nights will always be apart of college culture but, there are solutions out there to help. If you or a friend deals with not getting enough sleep, recommend some of these remedies. They’re pretty easy after all, all you need is a bed.