I can’t believe the semester is half over already. The days and weeks just seem to fly by and all blur together. Half the reason time meshes together so much is because college students don’t get any sleep so the past eight or nine weeks have felt like one long day.

You may not think losing sleep is a big deal, but lost sleep is never regained. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I usually get about six hours of sleep a night during the week and I don’t study nearly as much as some people do.

Studies have shown people in our age group generally need about 10 hours of sleep a night. Do a little math and that is 20 hours of sleep lost a week. That adds up to around 100 hours lost a month. That is like four full days of lost sleep. In a year’s time that is well over a month of lost sleep. Put it like that and it starts to get serious. No wonder everyone is so tired all the time.

So what’s wrong with being tired all the time? According to the Star Tribune, the most sleep deprived people are high school and college students and the people in that age group have greater sleep needs than any other age group besides early childhood. If that is true then why are we getting the least sleep as any other age group? We work too hard and need to cool it.

Another study has shown that 50 percent of college students are suffering from “serious or even pathological sleep deprivation.” Hmmm, these stats aren’t looking so hot.

Just so the rest of you can judge whether or not you are sleep deprived here are some signs:

You need an alarm clock in order to get up. Check for me.

You have to struggle to get out of bed. Double check.

You sleep extra hours on weekend mornings. Let’s see here.getting up at 7 a.m. or noon. that is an affirmative.

Lastly, you need a nap. Everyday.

There are more signs than these, but all people need to realize that they have a problem.

I don’t think that I am the only one out there who has this problem. I know it is bad when the second the alarm goes off in the morning I am immediately thinking of the next time I can squeeze some sleep in. When I was a little girl I thought taking naps was only for babies, but now it seems those babies really are on to something good. It seems like no matter how hard I try, I can’t stay awake in class. It could even be the most interesting lecture in the world too, and then all of a sudden I start seeing double as my eyes start to cross and then I am down for the count. It’s always amusing to look at my notes from that time. They can go from totally coherent to squiggly lines within one line of notes.

Perhaps the scariest part of all of this was the results of a study from sleep scientists at the University of Chicago. It said, “those who suffer from accumulated sleep debt may develop serious health problems including obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure.”

Great. I have a lifetime of being a fat, diabetic person with high blood pressure. At least I won’t be alone.

The reason we are all so sleep deprived is because all of our professors must think that their class is the only class that we are taking. About all of my classes require about two or three hours of class work to do every day. Now, considering that I am taking 5 classes that adds up. Plus most people have to juggle friends, boyfriends/girlfriends, working out and just relaxation time on top. There is definitely no spare time to be had in the day. Something has to give and in my case I usually have to alternate neglecting different subjects and skimping on sleep just to get things done. Especially in weeks like this when I have three tests and a paper due plus my birthday on Friday, sleep is the thing that gets bumped first. I am just waiting to get sick.

The only remedy to this problem I can see is for professors to stop giving so much work. I’m sure they remember how it felt to be so stressed. I learn the most in lecture anyway, that is if I can stay awake.

When it comes down to it, we all need to start trying to get more sleep. Even if it means letting some work slide sometimes, because the consequences of pushing yourself too hard is much more grim than getting that paper done at 4 a.m. So go to bed!