Late one night, the ghost of semesters past made a visit to my bedroom. Through droopy eyes, I tried to pawn off readings and responsibilities to him, yet he taunted me with memories of sleeplessness, fatigue and procrastination.

If there were some prize or scholarship that went to the biggest procrastinator, I’d be at least a semi-finalist. I’m a professional to the tricks of the game, like chewing gum, loading up on pop and leaving the window open in the middle of winter to keep awake for an all-night cramming session.

(Freshmen, beware: In a worst-case scenario, your bladder will wake you up in the middle of the night to discover that the gum is in your hair and you’ve picked up a cold from the chills — in addition, you will also be no closer to mastering the practices of microeconomics.)

For many young adults, college is a first shot at independence. You can eat as few vegetables as you please, watch as much television as you want, and stay awake as late as your heart desires. Moving out from under your parents’ roof (the one that restricted you through your entire adolescence) sets many students loose into taking advantage of every one of their new-found freedoms. Many students will agree that not only are sleeping patterns and studying habits the two major lifestyle changes without parents, but they also have a strong correlation to each other.

The Academic Success Center recommends no less than six hours of sleep in times of extreme cramming, an amount that the Sleep and Chronophysiology Laboratory at the University of Michigan has reported is the actual current average of sleep students receive. As the Academic Success Center further advises, the actual recommended amount of sleep is between 8 and 9.25 hours, although today’s students are receiving considerably less. Procrastination sets students into a vicious cycle of catch-up, where late nights become necessary to take care of all their readings and assignments.

Dr. Sherry A. Benton of Kansas State University says that there are several contributing factors that cause students to make the last-minute academic scramble.

Among these, she lists increases in tuition as well as social expectations and the increase in technological entertainment. Many students, she argues, are working long hours to provide for living expenses and tuition raises, placing a strain on study time. This is in addition to the traditional troubles of college socializing.

So, I move that the day be extended from 24 hours to 30 hours. This way, we have more time in the day for sleeping or studying. Additionally, if the regents would be so kind as to lower tuition by a couple thousand dollars, students would be less compelled to work multiple odd jobs to make ends meet.

At least that’s what would happen in a perfect world.

Instead of waiting for the impossible, it’s time for us to take our own initiative — there is a way to achieve that seemingly unattainable eight hours of sleep. One of the best suggestions comes from a seminar called “Making College Count.” Treat college like an eight-hour workday. Instead of napping on those perfect couches in Parks Library, do your reading on your hour break. By the time you get home, you’ll have a huge jumpstart on your workload.

Now, I’m no bookworm myself, but through baby steps, I’ll at least open up the possibility of more sleeping time.

I’m not trying to eradicate our fun and social lives from the scene, but by keeping up with school even a bit more, we can make our free time actually free. Without procrastination, we can have better sleeping patterns, which lowers susceptibility to illness and possibly even clinical depression. (Psychiatrists are trying to determine if sleep problems are a potential cause for depression.) Since we’ll be working harder, the opportunity to party with friends on weekends will feel infinitely more rewarding. We can end the cycle of self-abuse by slacking off less and putting forth more effort.

We’re all guilty of a little procrastination, so let’s get ourselves in gear. Even beyond our own initiatives, we have services on campus at the Academic Success Center, Student Health, and even through study skills courses to help us improve our personal scheduling.

If anything, it’ll at least prove to be cheaper in the long run. Late-night caffeine runs can get to be expensive.