Sleep Deprivation

College students often forget to get enough rest every night. Getting a proper, full night’s sleep is undeniably a vital part of maintaining your personal health and wellbeing. Sleep deprivation is simply defined as not having enough sleep. The typical college student (aged 18-22) requires about nine hours of sleep each night. In reality this is simply not the case as students tend to stay up late studying or going out with friends and still manage to wake up early in the morning for classes. Since it’s tough to balance sleep, school, and social life, students tend to sacrifice their sleep in order to maximize their time actually doing stuff. Sleep deprivation in extreme cases can even ruin your life. Take for example the case of Peter Tripp. This man purposely deprived himself of sleep completely (known as total sleep deprivation) for eight days straight. When he finally slept and woke up, he appeared normal but in the long term his mind was not the same. He lost both his job and his marriage due to this alteration in his psyche. This clearly shows that sleep deprivation has a direct link to deterioration in the brain. We must learn from this unfortunate case and remember to get an adequate amount of sleep regardless of other commitments we get. If not we risk developing the same kind of psychotic problems as Peter Tripp. Don’t deprive yourself of sleep!