Walking into the MacOdrum Library with the rest of the undead horde — I mean students — I noticed a sign before heading up the staircase that read: “The library will be open 24 hours today.”
As a psychology honours major, my first thought was, “Is that even safe?” I don’t mean an immediate life and death, call campus security type of safe, but a mental kind of safety.
Maybe I’m just worrying too much, but many studies have shown that lack of sleep actually undermines maximum cognitive processing; in other words, you’d likely bomb your exam.
I was also surprised Carleton would even encourage this behaviour of all-night studying. The 7 St. Laurent is the last OC Transpo bus to leave Carleton at 12:55 a.m. Aside from on-campus “rez” students, how would you go home and sleep? You couldn’t. How would it affect your exam performance? Probably pretty negatively. I think it’s a little silly of Carleton to allow this to happen to begin with.
As much as I want to get better marks than the dude or dudette sitting next to me, there are limits to how much I want to push myself. After all, school should never be a matter of marks or death. So you repeat the course — or the whole year — so what? We’re all relatively young. Compared to the alternative, there’s absolutely no shame in that.
Two studies (Pressman et al 1997 and Altena et al 2008) have shown that lack of sleep can result in severe anxiety attacks, which leads to depression, and I know there are more than a few people reading this who have seen how far that can go. It’s starting to become known that one in five Canadians suffer from depression, and I would take an educated guess that it’s caused by too much stress.
So ask yourself, “What good is my degree if I’m dead?” I’m pretty sure it’s not guaranteed that you’ll get into the good afterlife if you hand over your Carleton diploma to Saint Peter or whomever you believe in (although I assume chances are definitely lower with a University of Ottawa degree).
Okay, forget about all the doom and gloom of mental illness for a minute. Say you make it out of Carleton with a degree this summer. You find a well-paying job — great. You get a spouse — cool. You have kids — debatably good or bad. Then, when you’re 40 years old and done with paying your mortgage, car payments, life insurance, feeding your kids, and so on, your heart suddenly starts giving you problems. Gee, I wonder where that came from to begin with?
Similar stress studies, such as Ekstedt et al in 2004, have shown that chronic lack of sleep also contributes to coronary heart disease. You’re more likely than the next person who gets regular sleep to experience angina or, worse, a heart attack.
Yeah, you’re saying, “It’s just exam season. Barely two months out of 12 isn’t exactly ‘chronic.’” That’s true. But we university students don’t have normal sleep patterns, whether it’s from shift work or a (great) kegger.
Other studies have shown that people who do shift work for a living have lower immune systems (Irwin et al, 1994), and an inferior response to the hepatitis A vaccination (Lange et al, 2003). As I said before, add all those adult responsibilities to your life, and you may not have a very enjoyable experience.
By the way, I learned about all these studies in my health psychology (PSYC 2301) course at Carleton, and yet, they still endorse this practice of all-night studying at MacOdrum.
Don’t get me wrong, I like my A’s, especially if dinner from the cafeteria is on the line due to a bet with a friend. But to me, it’s not worth the heart problems in the future, nor the anxiety issues associated with stress and lack of sleep (been there, done that — not fun).
Personally, I believe you’ll do better on your exam not studying at all than by pulling this all-nighter stunt. There’s more to life than getting above 80 per cent, such as making fun of the Purple Donkeys and how they think they’re good at basketball.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go eat some brains . . . I mean, pass out.
— Abraham Lau
second-year psychology and law
