The Best Medicine for Your Brain is SLEEP!
Every job that our brain serves needs sleep. Whether it is for memory formation, understanding the world around us, or learning! All of these jobs require rest, just like the rest of our body. So, how does not getting enough sleep have impacts on these things, more specifically on our brain and learning? Cornell University included some positive impacts of sleep on learning. This includes decreased forgetting, greater athletic performance, and improved insight. The negative impacts of sleep deprivation includes cognitive impairments and susceptibility to memory errors. In the area of learning, this means that if you don’t sleep enough, you will have a very hard time learning, encoding, and remembering new information. For college students, many times at the end of the semester, it is accepted that the most important thing for them to do is study for finals, stay up all night writing papers, and not prioritize your sleep. However, students should know that they are digging their own graves while doing this. While studying all night instead of sleeping, your brain is not resting and is running on no sleep. When you get to your final exam the next day, the studying you did will be no help because your brain has no way of remembering of the information.
Just like eating, drinking water, and moving your body, getting enough sleep is a crucial part of maintaining a healthy body and lifestyle. We know that without enough sleep, our bodies will start to shut down and will not be able to recover from the activities we do everyday. But there are deeper consequences to not getting enough sleep, and they involve your brain!
I think a lot of people who are in college today do not prioritize their sleep like they should. The focus is on cramming the night before an exam or writing a paper the night before it is due. There should be more awareness around how important sleep is to our overall well being, especially mental health. We wouldn’t survive without it!
https://mtei.engineering.cornell.edu/tips-updates/teaching-tips/sleep-and-learning/
Very interesting post!
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your statement that many college age students do not prioritize their sleep as much as they should. Whether they are out late partying or staying up late studying for finals it does have a negative affect on their performance. As someone who LOVES to sleep and prioritizes rest greatly I think a big part of it comes down to time management which many college students struggle with. I have set hours during the week that I prioritize getting school work completed and after 6pm or before I go into work the computer goes away and night time is set for sleeping and decompressing only. I find that my brain works best in the early afternoon and after that my brain becomes fatigued and I do not perform as well. However, I do know some students work best at night but at the cost of their sleep I am unsure if it is truly worth it! Great post.
You nailed it—sleep really is one of the most underrated tools for learning and mental health. I liked how you tied it directly to student habits, especially during finals. It’s so true that pulling all-nighters might feel productive, but it actually hurts memory and focus. More students need to hear this message—sleep is not a luxury, it’s essential!
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