Student Perspectives: How Much Sleep is Enough?

Image Courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

By Anthony Curioso

How much sleep should I get each night? Many college students consistently ask themselves this question. A report published by the Learning Center at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill states that sleep needs vary from one person to the next, but generally, college students should get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night.

However, only some have the freedom to get that amount of sleep every night. I’m a Hall Security Assistant (HSA) employed by the Office of Residence Life, and we work from 9:00 pm to 1:00 am on school nights (Sunday through Thursday) or from 9:00 pm to 3:00 am on Friday or Saturday nights. There have been times when I’ve clocked out at 3 a.m. after working a shift on a Saturday night and found many people gathered around the Centennial Village fountain socializing as I was leaving the shift. I am mind-blown by this every time I see it because, in an ideal world, the only thing I want to do at 3 a.m. is sleep or get ready to sleep.

Additionally, depending on their majors, some people are constantly awake late to do homework or study for their exams. 

Personally, I can get around five and a half or six hours of sleep per night and, for the most part, be completely fine the next day. However, there have been times when I’ve felt an overwhelming need to roll my wheelchair over to one of the round tables in the Pryzbyla Center, put my head down, and nap for a while. 

Andrea Suarez, a senior theology major, commented on her ideal sleeping habits and how this differs from her reality.

“Ideally, I want to get nine or ten hours of sleep per night because women tend to need more sleep than men,” Suarez said. “However, I tend to get only around six hours of sleep per night because I’m doing homework or just physically can’t get to sleep.”

Student-athletes are one group of people who are particularly prone to sleep deprivation, especially here at Catholic. In an article I wrote for The Tower in November 2023 profiling now-sophomore psychology major Ashley Reardon, who competes on our women’s rowing team, she said that her daily routine starts with her alarm going off at 4:15 a.m. to make sure she has plenty of time to get ready before the team’s mandatory report time at the vans at 5:35 a.m.

Every semester since I started at Catholic U, the Office of Campus Ministry and the Student Government Association (SGA)’s Catholic Values Executive Initiative have collaborated to offer forty hours of perpetual adoration during finals week. Students could sign up for time slots during these forty hours when they wanted to spend an hour adoring our Lord. In my experience, it was fairly commonplace for the timeslots in the middle of the night to be among the first timeslots in the sign-up sheet to be filled by eager students. I have considered signing up for the slots between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., especially in the semesters since I started working as an HSA. However, I have never officially committed to signing up for and attending these time slots because I wanted to get whatever sleep I could in the lead up to, and during, the final exam period.

Overall, if one asks, “How much sleep is enough?” The answer varies greatly depending on a person’s work, school, or other commitments. The variety in people’s sleep needs is often most apparent if one spends time in various areas around our campus.