College Students Need to Reprioritize Their Sleep, and Here’s Why
Graphic by Chau Nguyen
When I thought my sleep schedule in high school couldn’t get worse, I was wrong. As a junior, I could easily run on five hours of sleep like a champ.
My average day in high school looked something like this…
7:45 a.m.: get ready
9 a.m.-4 p.m.: school
4:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m.: sports practice
7:30 a.m.-12:30 a.m.: dinner, shower, homework
5:30 a.m.: wake up and finish the rest of my work.
Rinse and repeat.
Admittedly, my old routine was not the healthiest for a high school student—but worked for me. When I arrived on campus this fall, I assumed college life would finally bring me more time: fewer classes in a day, no after-school practices, more flexibility. But, somehow, I still feel like I am constantly playing catch-up. Between homework, club meetings, and late-night conversations with friends, it often feels like I am right back where I started.
However, I have learned that sacrificing sleep doesn’t help me get more done. Research shows that it actually does the opposite; it weakens memory, causes trouble with decision-making and problem-solving, and slows down one’s ability to finish tasks. While this feels intuitive, getting enough sleep remains a persistent struggle, not only for me, but for much of the student population. From drooping eyes in classrooms to heads resting on open laptops in Widener, it is clear that I am not the only one struggling with this challenge.
A late-night walk through Cabot library makes it clear. Students hunch over desks, grinding out p-sets in the Math Question Center until 10:30 p.m. before heading to Brain Break for snacks and caffeine to fuel the long night ahead. By 4 a.m., some are slumped over their desks, while others are still typing furiously. The campus never sleeps. With a culture that breeds overcommitment, between packed course loads, social pressures, and extracurricular deadlines, prioritizing rest at Harvard is often not the default decision.
The truth is, most of us know sleep is important, but we just don’t act like it. In an environment brimming with ambitious students balancing coursework, extracurriculars, and social lives, it is easy to push rest to the bottom of the list. I am well versed in prolonging my excuse: in high school, I told myself college would be different. Now, I tell myself things will slow down after midterms or once a big project is over. Yet, I still find myself awake at 2 a.m. working on the next “most important” thing. The more I wait for things to slow down, the more I realize that time for rest won’t appear on its own.
College is where we begin forming habits that follow us into adulthood. A healthy sleep schedule won’t magically appear when life gets easier; it is something we have to intentionally make space for amid the chaos. To do that, it helps to understand what sleep actually does for us.
For college students like myself, it is easy to fall prey to the belief that staying awake a little longer means getting more done. But that mindset actually ignores what sleep does for us. Before the 1950s, many believed that sleep was a passive state when the mind essentially “turned off.” But Professor Robert Stickgold at the Harvard Medical School explains that “nothing could be further from the truth.” Sometimes, our brains are more active when we are asleep than when we are awake. Sleep occurs in cycles, with four main stages per cycle: three non-REM sleep stages, followed by one stage of REM sleep. During non-REM sleep, brain waves slow as heart rate and breathing drop to their lowest levels. Then, in REM sleep, the brain becomes highly active, stabilizing the skills and information learned throughout the day. For college students constantly taking in new material, that matters. Sleep allows our brains to process and sort through information in ways we can’t when we are awake. Still, around 70% of college students get insufficient sleep.
From my experience so far, college has been about constantly learning to balance work, a social life, exercise, and rest. Coming in as a freshman, I have tried to say “yes” to every opportunity. But as I am slowly settling in, I have learned that to maintain my sanity, I have to make daily tradeoffs about how I spend my time. If I want eight hours of rest, I might need to skip a morning workout. If I decide to run, I might have to say no to hanging out with friends. Oftentimes, saying “no” to one thing means saying “yes” to something else.
For students trying to say “yes” to rest, I have found that small changes make a big difference. On some nights, it works to schedule sleep like an academic commitment. Other times, I group my work into blocks so that I am not constantly jumping between tasks, or I set a cutoff time for checking my email at night. While no method is fool-proof, trying to start good sleep habits now will help you stay physically and mentally healthy in the long run. With only so many hours in a day, learning to protect time for rest is one of life’s most valuable skills.
As Assistant Professor Lawrence J. Epstein at the Harvard Medical School reminds us, “We need to rethink how we prioritize sleep. It is one of the basic building blocks of good health.” Sleeping well and making time for rest is something I’m still learning, but I already see how much it impacts my focus, my physical health, and my overall well-being. Some lessons are worth relearning again and again: fixing your sleep schedule isn’t about waiting until you have more time; it’s about learning how to reprioritize the time you already have.
Sonia Singh ’29 (soniasingh@college.harvard.edu) is excited to get a good night of sleep tonight.