When I came to the U.S. as a graduate student at Ohio University, my life on campus was full of things that were exciting, surprising and just plain weird.
On top of the weird list, I would place the attitude that many students held toward sleep.
It appeared that folks were proud that they needed very little sleep to go through the day. Sleepless nights were something to admire. Surely there are plenty of sleep-deprived people in Ukraine, but I never heard them bragging about it.
Many U.S. students seemed to believe that the best time to prepare for a test or write a paper was the night before it was due. While some Ukrainian students do the same ? many combine studies with a full-time job like I did ? they don`t suffer the same consequences.
Most establishments of higher education in my native country have a semester system: Students take most exams and submit papers twice a year at the end of each semester. Basically, you have to survive an extremely heavy load of study and sleep deprivation for a limited time only.
In U.S. schools, work is spread evenly throughout the whole year with only a modest uptick at the end of a quarter or a semester. I liked that a lot, precisely because that never created a need to forego a night of sleep for studies.
However, for many students, it meant they were sleep-deprived the whole year, for studies and partying, alike.
I could see the consequences.
In reading groups, students struggled to keep their eyes open. Young men and women slept in the most surprising places around campus: the library, cafeterias, class and even the gym.
Life outside campus was not much different.
The most surprising to me was sleep-deprivation in the medical profession ? among the people who should be the most knowledgeable of its consequences! Doctors, nurses and especially residents which sometimes meant that shifts lasted longer than 30 hours.
The same attitude was prevalent in the financial and business world. Investor bankers and stock brokers famously .
Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer said in a Bloomberg interview that at Google she worked all night at least once a week. She ensured that it is totally possible to work 130-hour-long weeks if ?you are strategic about when you sleep, when you shower, and how often you go the bathroom.?
The attitude that sleep is some sort of necessary evil is widespread in the U.S. In a monthly parenting advice leaflet handed out at the daycare where my son used to go parents were advised to sleep less to be able to manage more, with step-by-step instructions on how to cut an hour or two of their shut-eye time.
14 percent of Americans slept less than five hours a night. Twenty six percent slept six hours, and percent followed doctors` recommendations of seven and more hours between the sheets.
Those numbers have remained stable for the past 20 to 25 years. At the same time, .
Lack of sleep affects the so called ?executive function? of the brain the most. This is the ability to think through your actions, execute them according to the plan, anticipate consequences, and achieve intended results, ?NutureShock: New Thinking about Children? authors write.
The ability to concentrate and maintain focus suffers as well. , researchers tested cognitive abilities of people who slept four, six and eight hours. It turned out that the cognitive abilities of the sleep-deprived group (both who slept 4 and 6 hours) were diminishing daily till they stabilized at a low level.
Both these and other studies demonstrated that people who lack sleep often don`t realize how much their cognitive abilities and well-being are affected. Forgetfulness? Irritability? Professional degradation?
Well, what would you expect? We are getting older and life is hard, they say. In reality, instead of getting used to the lack of sleep, people adjust to their lower level of health and efficiency, accumulating sleep deficit.
In other words, we begin to hold ourselves to the lower standards of performance when going through a prolonged period of sleep-deprivation.
That never happens to me or someone I know, you might say. Yes, I also know a person who sleeps 4-5 hours a night and is an excellent performer in all areas of life. Some lucky people on this planet have so called ?. They can live on a few hours of sleep without any negative consequences.
One woman was known to sleep . And former President Bill Clinton was famous for sleeping just five to six hours each night.