Long hours of study while short-changing sleep hurts students

By Daniel Linck Savino
Online Forty-Niner
Contributing Writer

With finals in full swing, some students are now faced with the prospect of dealing with re-learning (or in some cases, simply learning) a semester's worth of class material in the course of several days.

For the proactive student, the process of preparing for final exams will be a simple matter of reviewing well-organized and thoughtfully presented notes accumulated over the past 16 weeks.

For the less fortunate, the remainder of the semester will be a flurry of activity and late-night study sessions. The consumption of coffee and possibly other stimulants can be expected to rise as students strive to capture every hour possible. But how useful are late-night cram sessions or the dreaded all-nighter?

Those unfortunate enough to have experienced such extended study sessions can easily identify with the fatigue and trouble focusing that besets them the morning after. It will undoubtedly be of interest to those planning on a long night hitting the books that numerous studies in various scientific journals have linked sleep deprivation to any number of negative effects. These are all counterproductive to high academic performance, and include decreased ability to focus, reduced motivation and lessened motivation.

Most interesting is that a decreased retention of facts are linked to the lack of sleep. In fact, the longer you stay up, the less likely it will be that you will remember what you've been studying. The ability to learn decreases as fatigue increases.

While it may feel more productive to stay up long and late working diligently on reviewing four months' worth of notes, you are actually doing yourself a disservice. You're much less likely to retain the information you've studied. It becomes a choice between managing to get all of the class material reviewed at a marginal level of comprehension and retention, or to review most of the lessons at real depth.

Beyond the academic ill effects of a sleepless night, lack of rest leads to other dangers. A common side effect of sleep deprivation is a negative change in reaction time. This increased reaction time can slow your ability to respond to situations, and generally makes for a much more dangerous time driving.

Getting into an accident on the way to school is quite possibly the least likely thing to help you get an "A," though you may gain a few extra days of studying should you end up in the hospital.

While there is a strong temptation to try to cram every last fact into your head the night before the final, it is worthwhile to stop and do a self-check.

If you're feeling exhausted, should your eyes start crossing and words start blurring, and various historical figures materialize and start singing bedtime songs, it's probably time to call it a night.

In the end, sleep will help more than the extra studying you put in by staying awake, either by willpower, caffeine or controlled substances.