Adjusting to a sleep schedule that is less than your winter break average of 10 hours takes some getting used to, especially when you’re sleeping with one or more sleep-deprived students within 10 feet of you. Unfortunately for you and everyone trapped in that confined space with you, a new study has shown that poor sleep can make romantic partners unappreciated. While we understand that in most cases you and your roommates are not romantically involved, we extrapolated these results to dynamic of Cal students.
One of the main observations of this study is that though one person may have slept soundly, the couple can experience problems if just one of the pair didn’t. With the early-semester overload of classes coupled with the habit of sleeping as the sun starts to come up, there’s a fairly high chance that someone in your dorm or apartment woke up in a cranky mood. And it doesn’t help that someone is bound to have an 8 a.m. class and an annoying alarm that resembles the assortment of noises a car makes when broken into. It’s fair to say that this study is accurate – fewer words are exchanged when people are running low on energy, and it leaves less opportunity for commonplace phrases like “thank you.” No one likes to feel unappreciated, particularly when we’re all pushing ourselves to work the hardest we can.
Another important point that was brought up was how a lack of sleep allots less patience for the idiosyncrasies that you’re used to. For example, the fact that your roommate eats his breakfast one Cheerio at a time may not have particularly caught your attention before, but the constant clinking of the spoon against the bowl would be quick to draw your ire if you’re already feeling sleepy in the morning. Projecting that annoyance into an aura around you can be contagious too, so be careful of how open you are with your emotions after a bad night.
You may not be fighting for control of the covers with your roommate – barring a very controversial bedding arrangement – but the struggles you face in the hours of darkness can really affect how you act during the daytime. In the university atmosphere, people always pride themselves on how little sleep they get as if it’s a feat worthy of celebration. Your room is probably not big enough for both of your cantankerous moods, so when you’re feeling tired, sleep! If you remember the rather arcane fact that you sleep in cycles of 90 minutes and the direct correlation between patience and sleep, we’ll all be better off because of it. Though the rules of couples may not apply, you probably spend more time with your roommates than with anyone else, so get used to dealing with them, especially at night.
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Image source: Benjamin Linh VU under Creative Commons
Tags:8AM Class, Amie Gordon, Cheerios, Serena Chen, sleep, Sleep Schedule
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