I attended a table talk on sleep this past week and I thought it was interesting what everyone had to say. I think in our (college) culture, we all think sleep is a luxury, and according to some of the preliminary readings, the majority of people are sleep deprived/don’t meet the recommended 8 hours of sleep. That is not surprising at all to me.

In the past (last year I think), for one of the Rose Scholars posts I have written about stress/well-being and how we essentially live in a culture where we perhaps romanticize being overworked. “I only had 4 hours of sleep last night!” a student would say, and their friend would say “oh I only had 3”–who is more overworked is essentially a “competition”. I don’t think I saw this as dramatically within my own friend groups, but I know this type of conversation is definitely a thing here at Cornell.

I’ve been doing o.k. in my own sleep schedule this semester, (probably still falling short of the recommended 9 hours and 15 minutes–but I think I get close at around 8 hours a night) but there are definitely still times when I feel like sleeping is a luxury. “Oh, I should be doing this”, I would think, and feel guilty for sleeping 8 hours, but then I would remind myself that there is absolutely nothing wrong with getting sleep! Especially when I know that if I get to the point of being too sleep deprived, I’m more likely to catch a cold, burn out, or feel mentally drained.

Taking care of yourself is definitely one of the first things you should do when you’re in a high stress environment like Cornell. I don’t think everyone realizes that and I’m sure we (me included) have all had times in our time here where we feel like sleeping is a luxury and not a necessity. I think this table talk was good in that we all talked about some of our time management skills/experiences as well as our thoughts about sleep.