Caffeine and Willpower

         
         

Caffeine and Willpower

"Sorry... I'm... a little out of it today," my lab partner apologizes, trying and failing to stifle a yawn. "I only got--" yawn "--five hours of sleep last night... had to stay up to finish a paper."

"Oh man, don't worry about it, I gotcha--" I begin to reply, but then suddenly cut off. "Wait. How many hours?"

"...Five?"

I scoff. "Dude! That's nothing! I've been running on three this entire week. You're fine!"

"But you're supposed to get seven to eight per nigh--"

"Pfft, that's not possible in college. I don't know how you manage five, but I'm jealous."

"How do you manage three?!"

I shrug, but the gesture is as cocky as it is nonchalant--I try to quell the slight smirk that appears under my bag-laden eyes, but like an alcoholic drinking her buddy under the table, I'm relishing my self-destructive superiority. "Caffeine and willpower, dude. Caffeine and willpower."

We've all had nights that have run far longer than they should have. Whether to scramble to complete a long-procrastinated project, cram for a till-then-forgotten test, or simply indulge in one... two... three... seven... twelve... fifteen episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender ("Crap, is that the sun rising? Uh, just one more"), we all remain awake deep into the night, particularly in high school and college.

Much-needed rest is substituted with borderline seizure-inducing quantities of coffee, and we haul ourselves through the day on both the stimulants and pride. "Sleep is for the weak," we say, as much to convince ourselves as worried friends and family. "No one gets enough sleep in school. That's just how it is." This alarmingly prevalent mindset is counterproductive to the purpose of studying in the first place. Sleep deprivation cripples students' mental capabilities, rendering them both less efficient in work and less retentive in study. However, romanticizing sleep deprivation in academia encourages students to continue to place assignments and leisure over physical and mental health.

Sleep deprivation turns the road of the mind into a self-created labyrinth of microsleeps and blurry focus, redirecting us through convoluted routes to otherwise-straightforward conclusions. That test answer we know, which should be just around the corner, is suddenly blocked by twists, turns, and forks of groggy deliberation. That response on the tip of our tongues, mere steps out of reach, can now be recovered only after a quarter mile of meandering zigzags. Forget acquiring new information; recovering the old is arduous enough without the burden of additional knowledge. We stow the extra weight of the old under a rock for later retrieval, but who knows when, or if, we'll ever come across it again.

When students finally reach the end of the maze--the test, the paper, the semester--the difficult journey makes the delayed arrival seem sweeter. We worked for the conclusion, overcoming obstacle after obstacle to obtain it. Once we have it, we revel in our success. We boast of the challenge we have overcome--the long, hard trek we have endured--the exhaustion we have trudged through just to function.

The fact is that all of this strain is completely unnecessary for most tasks. The quickest path is the straightest; we need not spin circles around an answer that is right before us. However, fatigue blocks direct routes, and we end up taking detours to solve a simple problem, answer an easy question, or write a straightforward paper than if we were functioning at full alertness. Furthermore, by delaying completion of our tasks, we exacerbate our dilemma. We must stay up late into the night once more to compensate for our reduced efficiency and precision, and the interest on our sleep-debt compounds.

Late or imperfect completion of coursework may be relatively inconsequential, but the workaholic mentality of American students survives beyond graduation, often with dire consequences--consequences that are not always limited to the tired individuals themselves. Doctors, especially in emergency specialties, are notorious for enduring inhumanely long hours. After surviving the trials of medical school, residents are subjected to shifts that can last as long as thirty-six hours. My mother, for example, an emergency physician, often worked this long in her early career. Medical professionals aren't superhuman; they are subject to the same detriments of fatigue as the rest of us, afflicted by the same impairments of focus and judgment after a sleepless night. Yet these outrageous hours are required of doctors and combined with medical students' intense study habits to become doctors set a dangerous precedent for insufficient sleep. Academic achievement is one thing, but one would think that matters of life and death should not be trifled with. After their thirty-fourth conscious hour though, doctors may be unable to save a patient from even simple injuries; all of the medical knowledge in the world is worthless if it is inaccessible due to exhaustion.

The solution to the problems of sleep deprivation is, of course, sleep, but fear, pride, and acceptance of the status quo continue to keep us up late into the night. If we go to bed with assignments unfinished, we risk failure. If we can't handle an all-nighter or two, we seem inferior to our peers. And if we survive academia, then shouldn't we be able to continue running on caffeine and willpower alone when we enter the workforce? Inevitably, though, the harmful effects of this toxic ideology will catch up to us. Inevitably, we will pass the point where coffee is no longer an effective crutch. Inevitably, our motivation will shatter under the pressure of stress and exhaustion, and all the work we've put in will be meaningless with our mental and physical health destroyed. Continuing to romanticize sleep deprivation as an inextricable part of the academic experience will undermine our education, cripple our careers, and set an unhealthy precedent for the next generation.