Catching up on Zs:

By Patricia Ho

In a culture that defines itself largely by what it does, sleep often takes a back seat to schoolwork, jobs and a host of extracurricular activities. A survey done by the American College Health Association and National College Health Assessment in Spring 2002 found that a mere 16.3 percent of students felt they got enough sleep to feel rested in the morning six or more days per week.

The adage "early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise" holds more than a sliver of truth. According to Associate ProfessorTracey Kahan, who has a doctorate in cognitive psychology, students that consistently do not get enough sleep put considerable amounts of stress on their bodies. "If every day or most days you're getting an hour or two less sleep than you need, it does have cumulative effects on your ability to concentrate, on your mood, and on your susceptibility to sickness. About halfway through the quarter students start getting sick. Part of that is because they are not sleeping enough, their immune system is compromised and they are more susceptible to illness," said Kahan,

In addition to negative health consequences, sleep deprivation has implications for memory formation and skill learning. "Certain kinds of skills, the memory for them, seem to benefit from Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep," Kahan explains. "Deep sleep ... seems to be important for moving packets of information from short term memory to long term memory."

Despite age-old wisdom and scientific evidence testifying to the necessity of sleep, it is an item that continues to rank low on students' priority lists.

"I'm aware of [the costs]," said freshman Liz Cirone, "but sometimes there's nothing you can do about it. I'm one of those people who feels like I have to get everything done, so I'll give up sleep if I have to."

Cirone's sentiments are not uncommon. For sophomore Ken Reidy, sleep comes third to schoolwork and sports. There are not enough hours in a day for Reidy, who will soon be adding a job to his list of things to do.

"I always feel like there's something over my head, there's something I have to go do. I think everyone has it like that but I think it's compounded when you have to worry about sports."

Devoting 15 hours a week or more to volleyball during the season, Reidy nonetheless feels the benefits outweigh the costs. "It's a good stress release for me to be able to play," he said. "I like being a part of a team and the camaraderie that goes with it."

Though he puts in effort to organize his time well, sleep loss is inevitable. "When I get behind in work, I definitely tend to cut back on sleep and it shows," he said. "Last winter quarter, just when our season got started, my classes were pretty rough, and, being a freshman, I didn't really know how to organize my time. My sleep was definitely in the four to five hour range. In the middle of the quarter I was sick for a week and a half."

This first quarter of the year is particularly stressful for freshmen, who must adapt to new living conditions and exciting new surroundings.

"They don't know which is up right now, sometimes. They can become overwhelmed and when people are stressed, sleep can become more difficult," said Wellness Center Health Educator Jeanne Zeamba, who has a doctorate in psychology.

For many students, the nature of dorm life impedes a good night's rest.

"Even if you're not staying up late doing work, you spend a lot of time just chit chatting and all that stuff," said junior business major Christina Jimenez, who finds that since moving off campus, she has been able to go to bed earlier.

Another factor that can contribute to inadequate sleep is a student's choice of major. Before switching to business, Jimenez was an engineering major for a year. "I used to be a big coffee drinker, but I'm not that much anymore after switching majors," she said, "You don't get sleep when you're an engineering major."

In spite of these changes, Jimenez finds that she still gets tired during the day, most often in the afternoons. "Even if I've had seven or eight hours of sleep, I'll go home and take a nap just because."

Sophomore Ampara Cid is a fellow fan of nap taking. Already weighed down with dancing for MEChA-El Frente and running for the senate, Cid had to forego volunteering in the Santa Clara Community Action Program. Cid often has to make do with five or six hours of sleep a night, and finds that she often gets tired after lunch.

"Naps went out in kindergarten but they come back in college," she jokes.

With schoolwork and all the activities students are involved in, napping may be the most feasible solution to a midday slump in alertness. "One thing you can do, instead of going to the library and falling asleep in the book, is to actually take a 20 to 40 minute nap," Kahan said.

Another coping strategy frequently utilized, willingly or otherwise, by students is to binge sleep on weekends in an effort to make up for sleep lost on weekdays. A typical bedtime for Josh Rector, a senior English major, is 5 a.m.

"On the weekends I just crash. I'll fall asleep at five in the afternoon and get up at ten in the morning the next day," he said.

This strategy, however, may not be as effective.

"If you are seriously restricting your sleep during the week, you are not going to make it up on the weekends - that is not enough time. It could take weeks," Kahan said. "When people have that kind of pattern ... they are disrupting their circadian rhythm. And they're disrupting a whole network of biological clocks that regulate thirst, alertness, body temperature, hormones, and disrupting the synchrony of those clocks to the point where the body doesn't function well. You're putting yourself potentially in a perennial twilight zone. Your body doesn't know whether to be awake or be asleep.

"There is a deep mythology imbedded in us that we don't need to worry about sleep, it doesn't really matter very much," she added. "And when you are young and healthy, you can manipulate and exploit your sleep to an extent, but it does catch up and it catches faster than you imagine."