You should be sleeping more and it’s the most important thing you can be doing for yourself right now! 

In this day and age going outside and spending time with people would be great, but right now that’s not what you should be doing. 

The year of 2020 is nearly over and most of it has been spent dealing with a global virus. 

Netflix has been binged, games have been played, and in the case of food? DoorDash has been to the door and already dashed. 

What else is there left to do? You guessed it, sleep! 

Nap throughout the day as well as sleeping at night. 

Sleep is a time where the worries of the day can slide off our shoulders, a place where we are free of the constraints that hold us back in our day-to-day lives. 

We can be our own greatest hero, saving the day and solving all our problems in our dreams.

The time isolating indoors has been impactful on people and not in a positive sense either, with an infographic from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stating that in late June over 40% of surveyed U.S. adults reported mental health or substance abuse issues. 

According to the CDC over 40% of 5,470 surveryed people reported negative mental health, including people reporting symptoms of anxiety or depression (30.9%), those with symptoms related to COVID-19 (26.3%), those who used substances to cope with stresses related to the virus (13.3%), and those who had considered suicide in the past month (10.7%)

Of course, sleep isn’t the solution to everything in the world. 

It won’t likely win any wars or find the cure to any diseases, but it can still help more minor issues. 

According to Psychology Today there is a correlation between not sleeping and depression. 

If you get enough sleep it will help mitigate the effects of depression, and with how sleep schedules have been altered while day-to-day schedules may not have, what option is there? 

Once again, it’s daytime napping.

For the average college student seven to nine hours of sleep are recommended. 

I, for one, wouldn’t have nearly that amount if it weren’t for my naps. 

In order to sleep I get in bed early and wind up staring at the ceiling for hours because it just won’t come. 

This matches up to testimony I’ve heard from college students from all walks of life at all sorts of universities. Sleep is especially important for us.

According to Healthline.com, “Not getting enough sleep causes daytime sleepiness … and can impact your performance. Other effects of sleep deprivation include … increased risk of accidents, memory impairment and trouble concentrating.”

Those last two are the real killers in an education environment. 

It can be difficult enough to focus on a lecture via a Zoom call, to add in additional trouble concentrating because of a lack of sleep. It’s practically begging for poor performance. 

That’s to say nothing of the nightmare that is taking a test with memory impairment. 

Ever stay up all night studying and are unable to remember any of it when the test is in front of you? 

That’s why, and it’s yet another reason to get sleep however you can for your own good.

Sleep deprivation is a real problem, for all of us. 

Whether we’re a student, teacher or anyone else, we all have felt the pain of a sleepless night once or twice. 

We need to be kinder to ourselves now more than ever. We need more sleep.