College Students and Sleep Part 3

2. Owl habits.

Teens and young adults are well known for their ability to sleep in until noon. A significant portion of 15-25 year olds are known to sleep scientists as "owls." Their internal clocks are longer than 24 hours. That means, if they were kept in a dark room for weeks, they would awaken and sleep in cycles of 26 hours, for example.

In the case of a 24 hour cycle, someone who wakes up at 8am would be sleepy by midnight. But if they have a 26 hour cycle, they wouldn't be sleepy until 2am. But in both cases, they would still have to wake up at 8am the next day. The owl suffers from sleep deprivation because they can't fall asleep and they still have to wake up 2 hours earlier than when their body is ready.

The best way for owls to deal with the faulty internal clock is to train it every day. Bright outdoor sunlight is the most powerful device for training the clock. Owls should get as much sun as possible early in the morning. Making sure that the dorm room window faces east and opening the blinds first thing in the morning are helpful. Once awake, plan an activity that involves being outside - like studying outside or walking to class. In the evening, avoid bright lights, including bright computer screens. Turn down the brightness setting on the computer screen and don't watch too much TV.

College Students and Sleep Part 2

1. All-nighters.

An occasional all-nighter is part of the college experience. It normally takes 3 days to recover from one. The first day after an all-nighter may actually be okay. Adrenaline is running high. The test or paper is done. It's time to celebrate! You might feel a little tired, but can usually stay awake all day long, especially with the help of caffeine and salty and sweet snacks.

The second day is the day you really drag. All day long, you can't focus, your eyes gloss over the page, and you feel like taking a nap in class. It's a wasted day where nothing gets done, or gets done poorly and you have to do it all over again later anyway. The third day, you feel a little bit better. By the fourth day, your body has finally recovered from the all-nighter.

The best way to avoid them is to plan better and to stick with the plan. That's easier said than done. Procrastination may be due to not knowing what to do, having perfectionist expectations, giving in to distractions, or lack of interest.

If you have to pull frequent all-nighters, then something needs to change. Analyze why they occur. Try to avoid getting into those situations. Perhaps it has to do with procrastination. Turn off the phone to focus. Seek help from your professor or teaching assistant. Ask questions. If it's a motivation problem, you may need to see an academic adviser.

College Students and Sleep Part 1

Penn State University's Student Affairs department is working on a module to teach students about sleep. I've been asked to look over the module. I work part time as a physician seeing the students, so I see many of the problems related to sleep. I hope it helps students understand the importance of sleep and how to get it. The goal of sleeping well is to function well during the day and be happy!

College students simply don't get enough of sleep. If I had to choose the biggest problem concerning sleep in college students, it's just that they choose to not sleep. There are many reasons for it. Going out to have fun with friends is often more important. Other students over-extend themselves with taking too many credits and participating in too many extracurricular activities. A growing percentage of students don't sleep enough because of their financial circumstances. They have to work 20-40 hours a week just to pay for school.

These young students have the stamina to stay up frequently, getting by on naps. However, they may not realize that just because they can do it, they shouldn't do it. Ultimately, daytime performance suffers. Over the next week, I will explore some sleep-related topics concerning college students.

Videos!

I finally took the 5 minute tutorial on iMovie from the Apple website and figured out that you have to press the space bar to play back the movie. Once I figured that out, iMovie was intuitive. We took some footage and uploaded some movies to YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc4z4gVJlLw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKO8RAFi2xg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th1BdTCcezA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFjfy3DMu4I

And then I edited the movie Brittany made too.



Hopefully the videos are clear enough to explain what SleepPhones are all about. Brittany's video is up to 20 watches after being uploaded about 40 hours ago.

I also went through an made the SleepPhones YouTube landing page into our color, filled in the profile info, and updated friends, subscriptions, etc. Now that I've figured out just how easy it is, we'll probably be able to upload a video every month. Just have to figure out what to film... maybe sheep!

Sheep's Photoshoot

Sheep is almost too big for our home-made light-box. He has to sit very still and try to smile!



The pictures are turning out well!



Uh-oh! SleepPhones are a big too big for Sheep. He's only about a foot tall.

Sheep Weighs Over a Ton

Sheep arrived in a big truck.

It took some time to unload Sheep.

Now the ton of Sheep lives in our living room!

On sale now.

SleepPhones in SkyMall Page 65!

Look for SleepPhones in the July-Sept issue of SkyMall page 65! It cost us a lot of money to be in there, so we're very nervous and excited about the prospects!