This editorial represents the opinion of The Bona Venture staff.
Midterms bring a chaotic atmosphere as most students are sleeping less, consuming more caffeine and spending more time in the library in the hopes that they will do well on their midterm exams.
Of course, exams are a big deal, but placing so much stress on yourself is unhealthy, with students assuming the upcoming break is a chance to catch up on sleep when the testing period is over. This really shouldn’t be the case. It is irresponsible to harm your body in these unnecessary ways.
A study in Ontario measured the sleep of more than 4,000 teenage students to see if they met the ideal 8.5 to 9.5 hours per night as recommended by the Center for Disease Control, according to an Oct. 1 CNN article. The students fell short with an average of seven and a half hours per night.
This may not seem far off from the ideal, but to make up for the sleep lost, students sometimes look for unnatural sources to replenish their energy. Caffeinated drinks filled with sugar and calories do the job for a while, but what happens when the buzz wears off? You feel tired again and reach for another cup of coffee or another Red Bull to continue the vicious cycle.
Everything is fine in moderation, but you shouldn’t force your body to run on synthetic sources of energy. There is absolutely no replacement for sleep. No matter how many energy drinks you pump into your system, you won’t feel as refreshed as you would with a proper night’s sleep.
Students cannot operate without sleep, so why would they want to try to do something as important as taking a test when they aren’t at their best? School is meant for learning, try to reatain anything you’ve learned while working on five hours of sleep. It is virtually impossible. The point of learning is to learn the facts for life, not to get through the midterm and forget the information by the time finals roll around.
So how can students avoid this dependence of synthetic energy during exam periods? Manage your time wisely. Wisely enough so you have time to get the recommended amount of sleep, yet still add in that extra library time. Sadly, this may mean spending less time with entertainment like television or social network sites, but break is quickly approaching and you could easily make up for the time spent studying. It may seem like an annoyance, but would you rather have passed all of your exams and missed a few episodes of your favorite series, or be completely up-to-date and have flunked your tests?
It may not be as fun, but you will get a bit farther in life if you have passed all your tests than you would if you have seen every episode of “How I Met Your Mother.” It may seem like the most important thing now, but wait a few years and students will probably kick themselves after not making the Dean’s List because they tuned in to see how many numbers Barney Stinson could get instead of hitting the books.
Students have ample time to study throughout the semester, but they are only given one body and there is no point filling it with toxins instead of learning how to manage their time wisely.
All this stress is completely unnecessary; there is no point in studying like a maniac if you harm your system in the process. If students can manage their time using the basic skills taught in University 101, they can get their work done and keep their sanity.
