Student Union
- By Bruce Alpert
Sleep Experts' Advice to Students About Cramming - Go to Bed
Not that they listen to him.
Earnest, a professor at Texas A&M University’s College of Medicine, says staying awake all night studying instead of sleeping doesn’t work and isn't healthy.
“The sort of common approach for college students…is to sort of wait until the last minute in terms of preparing or studying for an exam,” Earnest explains. “Because that way, you can cram all of your studying into a very short period of time.”
This academic strategy doesn’t really work, he says. “Unfortunately, it’s counterproductive.”
Research shows that people who stay up all night do not remember as much about what they read or studied. There is also some evidence that people even suffer temporary drops in their IQ ((intelligence quotient)), he said.
A 2014 report for the U.S. National Library of Medicine - part of the National Institutes of Health - reported that daytime sleepiness and irregular sleep schedules are common among college students.
The report said a lack of sleep can result in lower grade point averages. The research also found sleep deprivation can lead to increased risk of academic failure and emotional distress.
Recently, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that sleep helps improve brain performance by shrinking synapses, the area where cells transmit messages to other cells, thereby allowing us to wake up refreshed and ready to fill synapses with new information.
Company uses device to measure student sleep
Technology firm Jawbone manufactures a device that measures exercise and sleep. The company collected information from college-age device users to measure how much time they spent sleeping.
It found that college students slept an average of 7.03 hours during the week and 7.38 hours on weekends. Female students slept more than male students, getting an extra 23 minutes of sleep on weeknights and 17 more minutes on weekends.
Jawbone’s study seemed to suggest that college students were getting enough sleep. The time falls into recommendations by the National Sleep Foundation: seven to nine hours of sleep daily for people between the ages of 18 and 25.
Jawbone, however, said the average is misleading. Its study found that nearly half the time, students slept fewer than seven hours a night.
Earnest of Texas A&M said it is not uncommon for students to sleep 12 or 14 hours one day, after sleeping for little or no time the day before as they cram for tests.
Students at U.S. military academies such as West Point, the Naval Academy and Coast Guard Academy require students to rise before 7 a.m. That is the earliest required waking time for college students.
As a result, students at the three schools averaged 6.38 hours of sleep, the lowest among U.S. college students.
Other colleges where students average fewer than seven hours of sleep on weeknights include Columbia University in New York, the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, according to the study.
Students at the University of New Hampshire, the University of Oregon and the University of San Diego had the most sleep, Jawbone said.
The National Sleep Foundation offers suggestions for better sleep.
- Go to bed at the same time each night and wake up at the same time in the morning. Make sure your bedroom is a quiet, dark, and relaxing environment, and is not too hot or too cold.
- Have a comfortable bed, and do not use it to read, watch television or listen to music.
- Remove all TVs, computers, radios, and telephones from the bedroom: this is nearly impossible for shared dorm rooms.
- Avoid large meals before bedtime.
For die-hard crammers, Earnest suggests studying until 2 a.m., sleeping for four hours, and reviewing the material early in the morning.
Four hours is not enough sleep, but is better than none, he advised.
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US advisory council ends Nigeria visit, signs student exchange deal
Members of a U.S. presidential advisory council have approved a student exchange deal between an American college and a Nigerian university as part of the council's effort to strengthen collaboration on education, health, entrepreneurship and development between Africa and Africans living abroad.
The council also visited a health facility supported by the United States Agency for International Development in the capital.
Nigerian authorities and visitors chatted with members of the U.S President's Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement as they toured a healthcare facility in Karu, a suburb of Abuja, on the last day of the council's three-day visit to Abuja and Lagos.
The facility is one of many supported by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, to improve the management of childhood illnesses, family planning, immunization and delivery.
The tour was part of the council's effort to promote African diaspora-led investments in technology entrepreneurship, education and healthcare delivery.
"They're doing a phenomenal job there, it really gave us a sense of what the healthcare system is in Nigeria," said Deniece Laurent-Mantey, executive director of the advisory council. "This is our first trip as a council to the continent and we chose Nigeria for a reason — the diaspora in Nigeria is very active, very influential, and they're really a source of strength when it comes to our U.S.-Africa policy. And so for us coming to Nigeria was very intentional."
The council was created by President Joe Biden in September to improve collaboration between Africa and its diaspora in terms of economic and social development.
Akila Udoji, manager of the Primary Healthcare Centre of Karu, said officials in Nigeria were pleased that the council members were able to visit.
"We're happy that they have seen what the money they have given to us to work with has been used to do, because they have been able to assist us in capacity-building, trainings, equipment supply and the makeover of the facility," Udoji said.
Earlier, the council signed a deal for a student exchange program between Spelman College in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta and Nigeria's University of Lagos.
Laurent-Mantey said education exchanges are one of the council's top priorities.
"In Lagos, we had the president of Spelman College — she's also a member of our council — she signed an agreement with the University of Lagos to further education exchange programs in STEM and creative industries between those two universities," Laurent-Mantey said. "And I think for us it's very important, because Spelman College is a historically Black university, and so here we are promoting the importance of collaboration between African Americans and Africans."
In March, the advisory council adopted its first set of recommendations for the U.S. president, including the student exchange initiative, advocating for more U.S. government support for Africa, climate-focused initiatives, and improving U.S. visa access for Africans.
The council met with Nigerian health and foreign affairs officials during the visit before leaving the country on Wednesday.
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5 killed, dozens injured in clashes over Bangladesh jobs quota system
At least 5 people were killed and dozens injured in two separate incidents in Bangladesh as violence continued Tuesday on university campuses in the nation's capital and elsewhere over a government jobs quota system, local media reports said quoting officials.
At least three of the dead were students and one was a pedestrian, the media reports said. Another man who died in Dhaka remained unidentified.
The deaths were reported Tuesday after overnight violence at a public university near Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The violence involved members of a pro-government student body and other students, when police fired tear gas and charged the protesters with batons during the clashes, which spread at Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, according to students and authorities.
Protesters have been demanding an end to a quota reserved for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971, which allows them to take up 30% of governmental jobs.
They argue that quota appointments are discriminatory and should be merit-based. Some said the current system benefits groups supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Some Cabinet ministers criticized the protesters, saying they played on students' emotions.
The Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper reported that one person died in Dhaka and three others, including a pedestrian, were killed after they suffered injuries during violence in Chattogram, a southeastern district, on Tuesday.
Prothom Alo and other media reports also said that a 22-year-old protester died in the northern district of Rangpur.
Details of the casualties could not be confirmed immediately.
While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh's private sector, many find government jobs stable and lucrative. Each year, some 3,000 such jobs open up to nearly 400,000 graduates.
Hasina said Tuesday that war veterans — commonly known as "freedom fighters" — should receive the highest respect for their sacrifice in 1971 regardless of their current political ideologies.
"Abandoning the dream of their own life, leaving behind their families, parents and everything, they joined the war with whatever they had," she said during an event at her office in Dhaka.
Protesters gathered in front of the university's official residence of the vice chancellor early Tuesday when violence broke out. Demonstrators accused the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student wing of Hasina's ruling Awami League party, of attacking their "peaceful protests." According to local media reports, police and the ruling party-backed student wing attacked the protesters.
But Abdullahil Kafi, a senior police official, told the country's leading English-language newspaper Daily Star that they fired tear gas and "blank rounds" as protesters attacked the police. He said up to 15 police officers were injured.
More than 50 people were treated at Enam Medical College Hospital near Jahangir Nagar University as the violence continued for hours, said Ali Bin Solaiman, a medical officer of the hospital. He said at least 30 of them suffered pellet wounds.
On Monday, violence also spread at Dhaka University, the country's leading public university, as clashes gripped the campus in the capital. More than 100 students were injured in the clashes, police said.
On Tuesday, protesters blocked railways and some highways across the country, and in Dhaka, they halted traffic in many areas as they vowed to continue demonstrating until the demands were met.
Local media said police forces were spread across the capital to safeguard the peace.
Swapon, a protester and student at Dhaka University who gave only his first name, said they want the "rational reformation of the quota scheme." He said that after studying for six years, if he can't find a job, "it will cause me and my family to suffer."
Protesters say they are apolitical, but leaders of the ruling parties accused the opposition of using the demonstrations for political gains.
A ruling party-backed student activist, who refused to give his name, told The Associated Press that the protesters with the help of "goons" of the opposition's Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami party vandalized their rooms at the student dormitories near the Curzon Hall of Dhaka University.
The family-of-the-veterans quota system was halted following a court order after mass student protests in 2018. But last month, Bangladesh's High Court nulled the decision to reinstate the system once more, angering scores of students and triggering protests.
Last week, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court's order for four weeks and the chief justice asked protesting students to return to their classes, saying the court would issue a decision in four weeks.
However, the protests have continued daily, halting traffic in Dhaka.
The quota system also reserves government jobs for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups, but students have protested against only the veterans system.
Hasina maintained power in an election in January that was again boycotted by the country's main opposition party and its allies due to Hasina's refusal to step down and hand over power to a caretaker government to oversee the election.
Her party favors keeping the quota for the families of the 1971 war heroes after her Awami League party, under the leadership of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led the independence war with the help of India. Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members in a military coup in 1975.
