Dear Butler Community College students:
My name is James Dixon, and I am a freshman on a band scholarship at Butler Community College who struggles with getting enough sleep. After seeing so many students become so easily stressed and look to as if they have not gotten a good night’s rest in a while, it is safe to say that students especially at Butler do not get enough sleep. Young students especially need sleep, so they can be as effective as they possibly can in the classroom, when they are at their practices for sports, or even when they are studying with their friends.
Student athletes look to have it the worst when it comes to getting sleep. Athletes are having to get up at the break of dawn, if not before because of morning practices. These practices tend to have start-times at 3:30 to 5:45 a.m., and they can last to two to three and a half hours long. According to one of my friends who is part of the Butler football team, he said that if any of the athletes on the team are late to a morning practice, the next morning’s practice will begin an hour earlier. A lot of these athletes must immediately go to an eight am class right after their morning practices, and some athletes have classes until two pm. Athletes especially in football have to hit the weight room all year, so they can keep their bodies in shape and to improve themselves. So, athletes have to get up at three a.m. to go to their morning practices, go to class afterwards, sometimes going to class until two, but following class, they have to go to their lifting class, and then they have another practice in the evening right before dinner.
A Butler student athlete also has to deal with traveling all over the place for their games, and sometimes they have to try and sleep on a bus the night before they get back to get to their classes. On game days, they miss their classes and have to find time between an already packed schedule to get an assignment done and turned in before the due date.
Every student has a different amount of sleep that is the perfect amount for them. The amount of sleep a person needs always depends on how old they are, their health factors, and other personal issues. However, the average amount of time for a good night’s rest as well as to be at your full potential for that next day is seven to eight hours of sleep. Some people will say that the more sleep you get, the better you will feel when you get up, but oversleeping is just as dangerous as under sleeping, so it is smart to try and maintain a healthy sleep schedule, and maybe with an extra hour or two on the weekends is perfectly fine. According to the article “St. John’s Sleep Center Reminds College Students About the Importance of Proper Sleep,” Dr. Jerry Reedy, the medical director of Saint John’s Sleep Center, states that “{he} advises the average adult needs between seven and eight hours of sleep each night, but says there are many reasons why people don’t. “Some sleep deprivation is the result of personal choice, but for other people, there are physical inhibitors to falling and staying asleep” (“St. John’s Sleep Center Reminds College Students About the Importance of Proper Sleep”). Examples of these personal inhibitors can consist of anxiety, depression, and insomnia. Any form of sleep deprivation is extremely dangerous.
Effects from sleep deprivation can include depression, stress, anxiety, diabetes, high blood pressure, weaker immune system, blurry vision, overall frustration with life, and can lead to a shorter life expectancy. Some people are already dealing with these effects as regular everyday issues, so when sleep deprivation starts, it can make it even worse and may start seeing more of these effects begin to spark up.
Getting up for an eight a.m. class and having to slam that big gulp of an energy drink down or have to make a cup of coffee to go while walking at a quicker pace than normal because you got up at 7:45 a.m. and you are already late sucks. Trust me, I know the struggle, but let’s be honest, the only person here to blame is me, and so was that assignment that I procrastinated and ended up pulling an all-nighter getting it done. However, I have been trying to make improvements to my everyday life to help with this, so I can get a decent night’s rest.
To help those who struggle with sleep like me, for starters if they find that they are having a difficult time with their classes and forgetting about assignment due dates, I would suggest getting a planner. These little things have made my life in college a whole lot less hectic when I picked one and has saved me a couple of times from forgetting assignments. Even if they simply put the due dates of assignments in them, it can help immensely. For students who are struggling with getting a sleep routine going or for those who have had to travel a long distance to come to Butler and cannot quite get adjusted to the new time change, Melatonin can help, but I am not writing to say go out and buy a supplement to help make you sleepier. Melatonin, however, is a natural hormone in the human body, so it is a safe way of going about trying to get sleep, but do not immediately go to Melatonin since if it can affect your mornings, making you groggier when you get up if you are not careful.
Sleep is not easy to get in college since students are always working, studying, or even hanging out with friends, so just take a deep breath and keep moving forward.
I hope this letter helps a student who struggles with sleep like I do, and thank your taking the time to read this. If you would like to contact me, my email is jdixon9@butlercc.edu.
Sincerely,
James Dixon
