Dr. E once told us to take a long time to write essays and
think about them constantly: “imagine it as you go to bed, and wake up
glistering in the middle of the night with ideas.” He gave us a month to write
the paper, but being Uni students, we disregarded his sage advice and turned in
subpar essays written in two days, with as little thought put into them as
possible. I have found in many classes that, surprisingly, spending time on
papers really does make them better. I once wrote a paper in 20th
Century Novel about a topic I found really compelling, and I talked people’s
ears off about it given the opportunity. I worked a little bit on it every
night and found myself thinking about it in the shower and when I woke up. I
was glistering, and I ended up with a paper I could be proud of.
But busy students with six extracurriculars and five sports
and 16 video games to play like us never have the spare brainspace to think
about school outside of school if we’re not being forced. And that’s good in
some ways: time to play, to relax the mind, is really important. But all too frequently,
our “play” time is spent on stuff that really just keeps the mind spinning. Action-packed
video games are my favorite example of this—you get a rush of adrenaline, you
think fast, you process information as fast as you can and you get overloaded. The
downtime your body was expecting after a long day of attention is replaced by
more information, and that causes us to feel stressed. I really liked Dante’s
post a while ago about meditation. While I’m not asking everybody to go listen
to Glass compositions for an hour every day, I think we could all use some downtime,
and that’s something that, like Dante, we need to force ourselves into.
Another thing Uni students are missing is sleep. Sleep is
the most extreme kind of “downtime.” It organizes your brain and reduces
stress, especially REM sleep. Many studies have shown that the amount of sleep
you get directly affects your academic performance. And Uni students are pros
at getting less than 6 hours and continuing to truck through the school day. As
with the other stuff I’m talking about, there are some underlying issues on
this that our Utopias and Dystopias class could never hope to solve with class
policies. And as AA says, acknowledgement of your problem is the first step. Why
do Uni students get so little sleep? Is
it a status symbol to not sleep, implying you studied really hard? What causes
insomnia, and why? Are we just that bad at time management, watching Youtube
until 2 and doing homework until 4? Importantly, are we unique in this or do
other schools with less “driven, intelligent” students (quotation marks because
Uni tends to control for other variables besides those nominal ones: for
example, it more controls for driven parents) feel the same pressures, implying
wider societal issues in addition to Uni-specific issues?
These are questions
to answer in an essay, not a blog post. I’ve had 5 years to notice this trend
and taken personal effort to prioritize sleep, mental health, and downtime for
myself. I’ve also had parents who support me in this, which many do not. I
think Uni students should think about these issues of stress and relaxation for
themselves, and honestly evaluate their own behavior and how it affects them.
Although you make a good point about spending our downtime doing something more relaxing, I wouldn't discourage people from playing video games in their free time because that's a popular way for people to de-stress by focusing on something else. On the topic of sleep, I'm amazed by some of my peers who can function pretty well with little sleep. I think there's a common mentality at Uni that the amount of work you can get down is correlated to the amount of sleep you get, so those who want to be extremely productive sometimes give up sleep. Personally, not getting enough sleep greatly lowers my alertness and consequently my productivity, so I've almost always chosen sleep over extra time to get work done.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think down time is very important. However, I do not get where this notion of watching netflix, playing video games, or sports not being down time has come from. Doing nothing is not the only way to relax. Sometimes you just need something to take your mind away from the things in your life you don't like, like school. Aside from that, I really do agree about sleep. Sleep is very important for people our age, and we do not get enough of it. To put your points together, I think the problem with uni students is not being able to manage time properly. I know a lot of people who start their "down-time" and then decide to cut into their bed time, leaving them completely exhaused by the end of the week. I am guilty of this myself. Recognizing the imporance of both and balancing them is ideal, but unfortunately hard to do. It is what it is lol.
ReplyDeleteTo clarify, I'm not saying we should give up video games and other internet stuff. I totally agree that they can be relaxing, distracting, enjoyable, and a good way to spend time with friends. From personal experience, I think moderation is important, and I've definitely suffered from lack of moderation when playing games. You can waste time on anything, but internet distractions in particular seem engineered to maximize wasted time.
DeleteYou bring up a lot of good points and questions. I definitely agree that I've found that I have to "force" myself to get more sleep in order to break out of the habit I've gotten into of constantly sleeping less than six hours each night. I think it's partly the sleeping schedule that hard to break out of, and it's also difficult because there are other things that I want to do after I finish studying like watch netflix or facetime with friends, but they end up compromising my sleeping time, which is most important.
ReplyDeleteLol I usually get around 7-8 hours or more of sleep every night and I agree it does keep me p relaxed. On your topic of papers, I usually don't feel to invested in papers largely, but in one of my classes, I got the option to write the paper on any social problem of my choosing. The moment I got the choice to write about something that I honestly cared about with p much no restrictions, I got really invested in it. I was talking to various teachers and peers about the paper and actually spending lots of time working on it as well. Finally, as you pointed out, I was actually really satisfied and proud of my work. I think the idea of self-exploration and choice could be a big part of what constitutes a utopian classroom.
ReplyDeleteI agree. When it's a topic I care about, I'll work harder to make the end result good. The issue, then, comes from *how* the teacher can help you find something you care about. And in the end, as Betsy says, it still requires the student to have willpower and self-motivation. Those are both life skills that I believe schools (and parents) should help develop.
DeleteI typically get 7-9 hours of sleep a night, and helps me out SO much. A couple of times this year I've gotten less and known that it's not sustainable for me. I'm super lucky to have parents that will support me when I say that I'm going to ask for an extension and get sleep. I do miss having downtime though, and I'm trying to figure out where I've lost that in my time at Uni and why. If every classroom/class at Uni were utopian, would students still experience sleep deprivation/stress/lack of free time?
ReplyDeleteSleep is something I can't function without, and it amazes me when I hear people at school getting on average 4 or 5 hours of sleep almost every night. Another thing I agree with you on is procrastination. People always talk about having much homework, but I personally dont think its impossible to keep up with schoolwork, I think it's just a matter of time management. You make a good point about the essay -- it's always great to get to choose what to do for your project, because you get the opportunity to learn and expand on topics you're passionate about.
ReplyDeleteI think one other issue with getting enough sleep is that when I decide to stop working in order to get enough sleep, I keep thinking about what I needed to get done. Then being really stressed about it, I can't actually fall asleep or the sleep I get is of really poor quality. When I'm relaxing I feel guilty for it because I could be doing my work but I'm not so I get stressed and don't actually relax. If Uni was more utopian, I think students would need to realize that they don't have to be doing something all the time and that they need to have downtime and enough sleep, but I don't know how well Uni could change that mentality because it'd not just giving us less work, it's changing our mindset of needing to be busy.
ReplyDeleteI think that there is a lot to think about and flesh out in this blog post. I definately agree with down time in general and the notion the sleep is arguably the most imporant form of that. Personally, I struggling with finding time to sleep simply because I always feel like there just aren't enough hours in a day to acomplish everything that I need to get done between school work, my personal life, and of course, more school work. Especially at Uni, I think that it can be easy to neglect our feelings and go into machine mode as a means of surviving just one more exam or one more essay. What the soultion is? I have no idea. I think that the education that Uni offers is invaluable, but I also think that a balence between school and everything else should be achieved.
ReplyDelete100% agree. I wonder if it is Uni culture to complain about getting x hours of sleep to finish y homework assignment and to go to z extracurricular, and if somehow we are perpetuating this as being 'cool.' Or something stupid like that. But I also wonder if the people who are prone to not getting enough sleep because of distractions are realizing how much they need to sleep. As a person who has gone through a week of getting about four hours of sleep each night, I look back and realize that I was tired, yes, but there was something (an adrenaline rush, or just a dead tired brain unable to make logical connections) that was preventing me from allowing myself to just take a break and sleep.
ReplyDeleteI think relaxation is important but also having interests and taking in information outside of school is important too. I'm sure that if I went to school, came home and did homework, then went to sleep i could get as much sleep as I wanted. But i wouldn't really have fun. I end up procrastinating because there are other things I want to do. While sleep and relaxation are important it's also important to have fun and do things you enjoy.
ReplyDelete