From the Daily Northwestern, I'm Erica Schmidt. This is Season 2, Episode 8 of Digital Diaries, a weekly podcast following the college experience and asking students a question about life at Northwestern. Personally, I'm the kind of college student who's in bed by 11, but some students are nocturnal. I'm talking about an overnight session in the library type of nocturnal.
Weinberg Jr. Thomas Yang is a night owl, or at least he used to be. Yang spent many nights of his sophomore year at Technological Institute, more commonly known as Tech, with friends studying late into the night. As a biology and economics major, Yang says his course load is intense, which led to his odd sleep schedule.
Last year, I was taking Orgo, and I was taking all the pre-med classes, basically. But I was sleeping probably from, like, 4 to 5, and waking up somewhere between noon and 2 p.m. If I had a morning class, I would wake up for the morning class, but then take, like, a four hour and a half later in the day. Yang says about 90% of his late nights were because he was studying with friends long into the night.
I had a really bad habit where I wouldn't do anything during the day, and I'd start studying at, like, maybe 9 or 10 p.m., like, after I'd eaten and, like, scrolled Instagram for, like, an hour. But kind of with that, I would be up really late studying. Me and my friends always end up ordering DoorDash to tech at like 1 or 2 in the morning. As the night went on, a regular group of janitors would come by cleaning the halls.
We had like a room that we liked studying in tech and then day after day the trash cans just kind of kept getting more full with various different bags and boxes from different restaurants and because we were working in there while the janitors were cleaning they never wanted to come into the room and empty the trash can because they saw there were still people in it But one night as Yang was leaving the building it was just him and the tech robot left Tech has floor waxers automated floor waxers that run late night that literally just make sure the floors are all clean and waxed So I would just leave Tech and be the only one in the hallways and just be me and a floor waxer right next to each other. So that was probably also a moment where I told myself I would need to maybe start trying to go to sleep a little earlier. Yang now goes to bed around 1 or 2 in the morning. He says he realized how staying up late into the night was affecting his mood.
And that's where his advice comes in to anyone who has weird sleeping patterns. I'm not an advocate for losing sleep. I've technically never pulled an official all-nighter. Like, I've never gone 48 hours without sleep.
It's just finding what works best for you, as long as you're not destroying your health or, like, your happiness by staying up really or having a really wonky sleep schedule. It's like, if it needs to be done, it needs to be done. And if it's not really correctable, if you're in the middle of a quarter, it's kind of hard to fix. Communications and Weinberg sophomore Foster Lehman is the stereotypical late-night college student, the one that consumes extreme amounts of caffeine and rallies the next day to head to their 8 a.m.
class. Lehman has two majors, theater and chemistry. He says they are both time consuming, and sometimes the schedules don't align well. A lot of the theater activities happen very late at night, sometimes starting at midnight and going into the wee hours of the night.
So last week, I was in Shanley, the primary theater for undergraduate, Sukho and stuff like that. I was there till 1 a.m. almost every night, painting and set, designing stuff. But Orgo meets at 9 a.m.
every day. And so I be there closing out the doors around I don know 1 and heading back to my dorm just to wake up by 7 a do my reading and prepare for the midterms the rest of the day Layman says last quarter was spelled with a lot of sleeplessness while being in both a theater production and taking long chemistry labs I spent one night working with this new program that I just could not get to work at all. So I spent the entire night until maybe 3 a.m. I finally got it.
My lab reports are at 1 p.m. though. So I've got it printed out as much as I can before that deadline. I skipped all my classes, barely turned it in for the deadline, sprint to tech, and I'm in the lab for another six hours.
And so I wake up really early each day. That was almost a 45-hour day of, like, constantly being awake. He wouldn't do it again. This quarter, Lehman said he's been sleeping a lot more compared to fall quarter.
All-nighters are no longer his norm, but he's still constantly on the run between his two lives of labs and live theater. You get into these really interesting predicaments where you're like, when am I going to sleep? That can come out of stimulants like caffeine and monster energy and sugars, but it always ends in the same road where you're rolling into either your rehearsal or your lab lock on, like, a power bar and two monster energies, and you're just caffeinated out of your brain cells and you can't think straight. Lehman says barely sleeping is unsustainable, though, and may lead to burnout.
He survives it by hibernating for a couple of weekends out of the quarter to catch up on sleep. His advice for students struggling to balance schoolwork with self-care? You can find a time where you're like, maybe I should study this for another four hours or I should go to sleep. I think the answer is you should go to sleep.
Ultimately, you build up a sleep deficit. You should probably get about eight hours a night to be successful. As soon as you build up a sleep deficit of more than 24 hours, you're going to be toast and you won't succeed. Weinberg sophomore Lila Shea is on the Northwestern Club figure skating team Their practices are twice a week and end between 11 p and midnight Then I had to adjust after joining the team I would say I go to bed probably pretty consistently around 1 a or maybe midnight on a better day Unfortunately, Shea is also a morning person.
I wake up pretty consistently at 8.30 no matter what I try to do. And one that needs her rest. I really truly need my eight hours. I'm a coffee drinker now because I don't always get those eight hours.
And even then, like, it reaches a point where coffee stops working for me. And then I'm just, like, truly too exhausted to function. So unlike Yang or Lehman with their nighttime tendencies, Shea is actually the extreme opposite. it.
Instead of staying up late, I prefer waking up early and finishing things. So I've literally woken up as early as like 5am to finish an essay that's due that day. I just prefer sleeping first and it's a lot more pressure too when like there's three hours until it's due. So it helps me get it done faster knowing that like I have to get it done now or never.
She admits that with stress and the skating competition season in full swing, she is unable to get the same amount of sleep she usually does. She gives advice that she tries to follow herself. Prioritizing getting sleep I think is a good first step. Lately I've been trying to go to gym because it helps me like fall asleep quicker I think at the end of the day.
From the Daily Northwestern, I'm Erica Schmidt. Thanks for listening to another episode of Digital Diaries. This episode was reported and produced by me. The audio editor of The Daily Northwestern is myself.
The digital managing editors are Joanne Hainer and Olatunji Osho Williams. And the editor-in-chief is Alex Perry. Make sure to subscribe to The Daily Northwestern's podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or SoundCloud to hear next week's episode.