Daily Staff Writer

Pencil. Coffee. Sketch. Coffee. Erase. Sketch. Caffeine. Write. Coffee. Crash.

This routine is familiar to design students who spend hours or days at a time camped out in the basement of the College of Design Building finishing art projects and toying with their health.

“The longest I went without sleep was 48 hours,” said Michael Jorris, junior in graphic design. “But I know several friends that have gone much longer.”

Emily Seibert, junior in graphic design, said she went 56 hours without sleep last year.

When the time arrives for projects to be completed, Seibert, along with many other design students, often spend nights at the College of Design Building or in the studios at the Armory.

“[It is] like my second home sometimes,” she said.

Dana Reed, academic adviser for art and design, blamed lack of sleep on time management skills.

“Art students don’t realize you can’t knock out a project in two days,” she said. “All-nighters are usually the result of poor planning.”

All-nighters in the Design Building are not common just for upperclassmen or students who are nearing graduation. Some students start with the all-nighters within their first couple of semesters.

“Artists are perfectionists. We are the kind of people who have an eye for good and bad design and we refuse to accept creating bad design,” said Tegan Wolfe, junior in graphic design. “If it is the night before a due date and we don’t like how our work is looking, we start over.”

If time isn’t the right excuse to use to justify an all-nighter, maybe the professors who teach these classes are to blame.

“Many professors suggest changes right up to the day before projects are due and we are never truly finished, as in there isn’t a definite answer to our projects,” Jorris said.

Not only do professors request alterations, they often ignore any request for an extension.

Wolfe said earlier this year her hard drive crashed and all of her projects were lost. She was required to start projects over for three different studios. When she explained her situation, one professor told her, “There are no extensions in life; if you don’t finish your work on time your client is going to hire someone else.”

Wolfe said she understands professors have experienced the same problems students have, so professors can relate.

Lynn Paxson, associate professor of architecture, said many of the studio classes require public reviews where students have to present their work to the class.

“Students can ask for more time, but they need to be ready when the public review happens,” Paxson said.

Whatever the excuse is, there are consequences that result from sleep deprivation and pulling all-nighters. These consequences include the chance of poorer grades and health risks.

“From what faculty [members] see, they know which students have been up all night and which students haven’t and they are able to tell which projects had a lot of time spent on them,” Reed said.

Students mentioned mood swings, headaches and acne breakouts as minor health issues caused by their sleep deprivation. But others don’t see any change in their health.

“I think my body has adjusted to no sleep since I’ve been in the design program,” Wolfe said. “Usually after a project gets turned in, I just skip class and sleep.”

All-nighters can have a bigger impact on some students than others.

“Usually the day after an all-nighter, I am more prone to being lethargic and staying awake for classes can be a problem,” said Megan Custer, sophomore in graphic design.

According to an Institute of Medicine report, an estimated 50 to 70 million Americans are plagued by a sleep disorder, and the 2005 Sleep In America poll by the National Sleep Foundation shows that adult Americans average 6.8 hours of sleep on weeknights and 7.4 hours on weekends. The ideal sleep period is seven to eight hours a night, according to a U.S. Newswire article.

Risks associated with sleep deprivation don’t end there.

A 2000 study in the British journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine stated driving while suffering from sleep deprivation may be as harmful as drinking and driving. The study showed that drivers who had been awake for 17 to 19 hours were worse off than drivers with a blood alcohol level of .05 percent. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 100,000 or more vehicle accidents a year are the result of driver fatigue.

The answer to sleep deprivation may seem simple: Start projects earlier.

“There really is no way of avoiding [all-nighters] completely, but if they manage their time better they can avoid them,” Jorris said.

However, if the all-nighters are unavoidable, there are a few things students can do to make them a little more bearable.

“Work in groups,” Wolfe said. “I love being in the graphic design program because we spend so many hours together and have all of our classes together. We have become close friends and even spend time outside of the design realm hanging out.”

Paxson said many professors try all semester to work with students so that in the end, students are not required to pull all-nighters.

“[Design] is the type of program with a lot of people who are high-performance students,” she said. “There are students who will stay up all night to get an A and then there are others that sleep and get a B.”