Why You Should Sleep During Finals

By Lorraine Jazleene Biteranta on June 23, 2014

Image via http://stateschronicle.com

I have always considered myself to be an extremely healthy person. I exercise, eat a balanced diet, take my vitamins, and have methods of cooling myself down whenever life gets tough. However, the one thing that everybody needs is the one thing that I tend to refrain from: sleep.

Come finals, the added stress of exams causes many of us to sacrifice our much needed sleep in order to study, finish up projects, or just stress out. Most of us don’t realize that we are actually doing more harm than we are good.

Between last Monday and Thursday, I had gotten a total of four hours of sleep – and I’m rounding up. I loaded my body with cup after cup of coffee, hoping to boost my chances of passing all of my classes with the extra hours of work. Although I studied extensively for my classes, the lack of sleep produced devastating results for my finals.

Monday: This day, I had two finals. The first final was for an English class, and the only thing we did was turn in a revision of a paper and watch a movie. I was feeling okay despite having been up all night working on the revision.

By my evening final, I had three cups of coffee to thank for staying awake. That was for statistics, which was the final I had spent all of the previous week studying for. I came in confident and ready to pass.

However, twenty minutes into the exam, my bladder was so full that I wanted to run to bathroom and forget the exam. I did the exam quickly, compromising any chance of a perfect score. I didn’t even bother to double-check any of my answers; when I was finished, I turned in my final and raced to the restroom to relieve myself of the coffee that had been sustaining me.

Tuesday: This day, I only had one final and it was for an art class. I had only gotten two hours of sleep the night before.

Instead, I stayed awake studying and working on my project. I had learned my lesson from the previous day and was waiting until after the exam to indulge in my second cup of coffee.

Unfortunately, that meant that I could hardly focus. I looked the final up and down and began to write whatever came into my mind, hoping that I had answered the questions in a passable manner. I yawned throughout the entire final, begging my mind to focus. Finally, I turned the paper in and left the classroom, heading straight for the coffee shop on campus.

Wednesday: This day was the second biggest exam I had. It was for an Art History class, and it was the make or break test that determined if I would receive an A or a B in the class. I did not sleep at all the night before. I walked into the classroom and immediately put my head down on my desk, wondering if the lights in the classroom had always been that bright or if it was the lack of sleep and lack of caffeine in my body.

My professor was kind enough to bring us coffee in the morning, yet I refused to drink any because of what had happened on Monday. Instead, I took the final and left, ready to study. I fully intended on working on my project once I got home, but instead I crawled into bed at 9 AM and fell asleep, only to wake up panicked an hour later.

I was convinced that I had missed the final I had just taken. Even after realizing I had already taken it, it still took me about half an hour to calm myself down and begin any work on my project.

Thursday: Thursday, I had another English final for a class in which all we did was read some of the pieces we had written throughout the course of the class. After getting a grand total of thirty minutes of sleep the night before, I walked to class exhausted. I crawled onto the floor in front of my classroom and attempted to fall into a deep sleep; however, my professor came not a moment later.

As I walked toward my desk, I began to feel extremely nauseous and light-headed. Fearing I was about to faint, I sat in my chair and breathed in deeply, hoping to distract myself from my worn out body. We had a potluck during this class and my classmate so graciously provided Starbucks coffee, which I drank slowly. In the middle of the class, I began to feel extremely nauseous again. The class couldn’t have been over soon enough.

My last class was the art class in which my project was due. It was simply a critique day, and yet my exhausted body could neither listen nor absorb anything my professor or classmates were saying.

By the middle of the period, I realized that what I had been doing to my body was pure abuse. I was neglecting to sleep, which meant neglecting both myself and my health. I chose to stay up throughout multiple nights simply so I could get as much information into my brain as possible, however what I ended up doing was completely compromising my grades.

I’ve been told I was intelligent, but after the events of this past week, I’m left wondering if anybody with brains would ever jeopardize their education the way I did.

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