Sleep is a Necessity, not a Privilege
Elyas Naddour | Writer
“Class, don’t forget your exam on chapters 1-7 tomorrow,” the teacher says.
Great, another all-nighter for the week.
All these exams, handouts, quizzes, and endless pages of reading slowly chip away at your sleep. It’s agreed that all these assignments are supposed to help the human brain, but could they actually be hurting it?
Could all the time spent drilling information into your head, only to forget it the next day, be better spent getting good sleep, doing something creative, or spending time with your loved ones? Could the reliance on caffeine among students be a result of the workload schools give us?
Should students be expected to juggle a job, pages’ worth of reading, and possibly taking care of younger siblings, all while their parents scold them for not getting perfect grades? All these questions, and I still haven’t even answered question one in my macroeconomics class.
A lack of sleep is normalized, even flaunted, when it shouldn’t be. Sleep deprivation can hurt our ability to focus and learn, yet we treat losing sleep like a medal. Sleep is a necessity, not a privilege.
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