Although it has been proven to be bad for health and an ineffective way to learn, students continue to pull all-nighters to study for finals.
Sleep deprivation may not be a guarantee for a passing grade in a class, but students stay up all night studying for finals nonetheless.
Staying up all night can cause a slew of negative health effects. Those include increased risk for heart problems, depression, anxiety and other mental disorders, as well as weight gain, just to name a few. One study done by researchers at Harvard Medical School found that regularly getting five or less hours of sleep a night increased the risk of death by 15 percent.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard Medical School also found that young people who were constantly sleep deprived and stayed up all night regularly were at risk for developing permanent brain damage.
None of those risks seem to be stopping college students from trading their beds for a chair at Alden Library, though.
Michael Grant, an assistant professor of psychology, said students resort to pulling all-nighters for a variety of reasons, such as workload and time management, which can keep students from preparing for their exams earlier in the week.
“Maybe some people are used to studying that way,” Grant said. “Everyone’s different, but I think the student who’s prone to (staying up all night) is probably used to having done that, whether it’s a time management issue or not.”
Those students seem to have the wrong idea, though. Grant said cramming the night before a big exam is typically not an effective way to study.
“People learn different ways, and people prefer to use different modalities of learning,” he said. “Some people can study very little and perform well. But for the majority of people, I would say that’s not the best strategy. If you’re cramming the night before using flashcards … that rote repetition doesn’t really facilitate a deep level of processing.”
Despite that, Grant said studying all night has become part of college culture.
“I think the majority of students do it for the majority of classes,” he said. “I think it’s probably more prevalent than we think it is.”
Alex McCann, a freshman studying journalism, said he has never stayed up all night to study.
“I feel like if I haven’t learned it by 2 or 3 a.m., I’m not going to retain it in the morning,” he said. “So I’m better off getting several hours of sleep rather than being completely drained in the morning.”
McCann said he only would consider depriving himself of sleep if there was no other option.
“The only possible scenario where I would pull an all-nighter would be if there was some exam that I hadn’t studied for at all and hadn’t realized it was coming up,” he said. “But even then, I still would try not to.”
Zak Parrinello, a senior studying anthropology, said although he has never stayed up all night to study, he has many friends who have. He said they do many different things to stay awake such as drinking coffee and energy drinks and doing pushups. He said he also knows people who have used the prescription drug Adderall to stay awake and to focus.
“It’s unfortunate because it’s meant for people who actually need it, but there are people (not prescribed) who do use Adderall,” Parrinello said. Adderall is given to people who are diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
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Despite it being illegal to purchase and take Adderall without a prescription, Parrinello said it's easy for his friends to buy it in Athens.
“It’s all about who you hang out with and who you know, but usually it is (easy to find) on a college campus,” he said.
However, Parrinello said Adderall has not always been effective as an aid to his friends' studying.
“From what I’ve heard, it does get them focused,” he said. “But I’ve heard of people that it backfired for, and they take it, and then they don’t study. They just end up, like, cleaning their room or going on YouTube.”
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