Sleep – The key to academic

success
What could possibly be the key to academic success? Studying hard? Staying up late for school projects?
What if I told you that those aforementioned aren’t quite the answer? Because the real ‘key to academic
success’, is sleep.

Our bodies need approximately 8-10 hours of sleep, for students, sleep is almost taken for granted, since
we have piles of school works to do. However, we must learn the importance of sleep in order to achieve
our full potential as students.
Not only is sleep critical in the functioning of all body systems, scientists have found a distinct correlation
between our ability to learn and process memories, and our sleeping habits. Studies show too little sleep
can contribute to many physical and mental health issues, including poor ability to learn, depression, high
blood pressure and disease.
For all of us, memory and learning are consolidated during sleep. For adolescents, this mostly happens
during REM sleep - which is a phase in the sleep cycle that happens after deep sleep. During high-
pressure times such as exams, students are often tempted to pull all-nighters to cram for the next day.
Unfortunately, this is often pernicious - because with fewer hours to reach the REM phase, the teen brain
doesn’t get enough time to lay down what they’ve studied the night before.
Of course, this does not mean we, students, should not study well before going to sleep. As the real
benefits occur when teens get a good night’s sleep after studying for the exam.
Dr. Frances Jensen, a Neuroscientist, stated in her groundbreaking book, ‘The Teenage Brain’ that
‘Bedtime isn’t simply a way for the body to relax and recoup after a hard day working, studying or
playing. It’s the glue that allows us not only to recollect our experiences but also to remember everything
we’ve learned that day.”
Even if you feel you can work effectively with little sleep, your performance is still likely to be worse
than it would be if you were well rested.
According to Professor Cari Gillen-O’Neil and her colleagues from the University of California,
they found that sacrificing sleep can be counterproductive.
They found that academic outcomes were strongly linked to how much sleep the students had the
previous night. Even if they stayed up late to study more, their lack of sleep had a negative impact on
their test results. They would have done better studying less and getting more sleep.
These negative effects are made worse the more nights you work late. Pulling multiple late night study
sessions in a row leads to poorer and poorer results.
The researchers didn’t find any evidence of individual characteristics playing a role in the effects of sleep
on their study.
There are a lot more research concerning this topic, and according to Dr. Guiseppe Curcio and his
colleagues from the University of Rome, bad sleep leads to poor academic performance.
Dr. Giuseppe Curcio and his colleagues from the University of Rome looked at the effects of bad sleep on
learning.
They examined how young people, from school children to university students, performed at academic
tasks the morning after a bad night’s sleep.
Unsurprisingly, those who had slept poorly felt tired throughout the day, affecting their mood and their
sociability. And tired students also struggled to learn and retain new information.
Dr. Curcio observed that ‘higher cognitive functions’ were most affected. So poor sleep led to worse
attention, a lessened ability to solve problems and reduced academic performance.
Tiredness lowers your ability to engage with complex tasks, assess mental data and take important
decisions. And these are some of the core skills you need during an exam or high-pressure work
assignment.
Therefore, we’ve come to the conclusion that sleep is often more important than studying. Of course, this
does not mean we shouldn’t study well, but rather, we, students, must always try our best to get a good
night’s sleep and get things done before our bedtime.