Sleep – we as human beings are never able to put this issue to rest. We either get too much of it or we don’t get enough. It is a surprise to see that such a large part of your life is so unstable. Sleep, as we all have experienced, is detrimental for prime human production and performance. So, is sleep our enemy or our friend? With so many unproved myths and famous rumors are spread about the touchy subject, who knows what we can believe?
Until about 15 years ago, one common theory was that if you slept at least four or five hours a night, your cognitive performance remained intact; your body simply adapted to less sleep. It is said that the quality of your sleep directly affects the quality of your waking life. Then why not get more of it? The answer seems simple, but being college students, there almost seems to be no end to our sleepless cycle. 

         Sleep – 8 hours a day should do the trick. Right? As babies, we needed it because we had to grow. As kids, we needed it so that we could play and get in trouble. As teenagers, we needed it because we needed to learn and start to figure out the ways of life. Now, as young adults and college students, we need it to go out and discover new things in the world and take care of ourselves and our responsibilities. Most college students get 6-6.9 hours of sleep per night. With all these new things to learn and do, it seems like there aren’t enough hours in a day! 
The logical thought process for the normal college student would simply be to stay up as late as humanly possible and get it done; no sense in worrying about it tomorrow. Live in the now, and worry about the then later. Little do we know, this great advantage of sleep can help us physically and mentally!

         Sleep – why not take better care our bodies? In a recent study, “a newly discovered system scrubs away neural waste, which is most active when you’re at rest.” Groundbreaking. Why would you not want to wake up in the morning feeling refreshed, a clean-sweep of your brain leaving you without a worry. As a college student, we get loads of information just dumped into our brains daily. We need sleep to allow our brains to figure it all out in a way that won’t fry it. This leads to the endless stress of multiple assignments and papers and work that is necessary to a decent grade. With the pressure of turning papers in on time, sleep takes the back seat.
College students are sleeping less. This is a true statement that can be observed in campuses all over the world. Sleep deprivation screws with our energy and our ability to fight off illness and fatigue. Grade point averages decline as does the well-being of the college student. 

         Sleep – we need to spread awareness. We have all had first hand experiences of our sleep deprivation as college students. Whether it be falling asleep in class, feeling miserable after a short period of unconsciousness that we would like to call sleep, and altogether struggling with day to day activities. 
With this said, it is time to start living. This sleep issue is eating up so much of our lives that we hold so dear. It’s time to stop dragging ourselves around and half-heartedly doing the things we love and interacting with the people we care about. It’s time stand up to sleepless nights and the extra hours of sleep that leave us more tired than we were when we laid down to take that unneeded nap. If we can achieve the proper amount of rest that is needed to function and fulfill our lives to the highest degree, we can achieve our highest goals in life, even if they are just everyday tasks. 

        Sleep - as a small Time Arts class, we shall conquer sleep. No longer will we get too much or take the minimum. Sleep will be our priority and we shall overcome this ongoing dilemma by spreading awareness and provide the opportunity to sleep and nap and get back on top of our collegiate lives!