Summary Paper

Yashna Murli

COM 480 Health communication

Date: 6th May 2021
Word count: 3741
Sleep is a crucial aspect to be able to function. Therefore, after the survey, I realized that

many people think caffeine is an important aspect to stay up, which is the ethical way to do

so. Before I go ahead with my campaign idea, I would love to refresh some information about

sleep. Being in college is when our bodies reach the optimum level of lack of sleep. And our

bodies tend to get our tipping point during this time. We learn to do our assignments and

make them a quality of writings. And I always found that fascinating. The question is, is it

just lack of sleep and the caffeine, or is it the pressure? Is it crucial as the reason for lack of

sleep also varies from the person and their experiences? Due to shock, the individual is

unable to attain sound sleep or due to cognitive displacement. Therefore, this interview

helped me understand the perspective and how events trigger lifestyle changes. And also gave

me insights on how to go about the campaign. I started the discussion with a fundamental

approach to how much sleep does she get on campus.

To which she answered that it varied from 4-6 on weekdays and 8-9 hours on weekends. And

then I asked her the same question as to when she is back home. To which the response was

7-9 hours each day of the week. I genuinely believe problems like insomnia, eating disorder

due to stress which causes lack of sleep causes. "Stunkard and colleagues originally described

NES ("night eating syndrome") in 1955" (Auger, R. R. (2006). Sleep-related eating

disorders). Have you ever realized how many people or you, for instance, get hungrier in the

night? It is called nighttime syndrome, which causes one to eat due to boredom or due to

restricted day time eating. It is a known stigma that watching shows and partying late or

staying up has something to do with our recent generation. This is because many college

students connect this to the nightlife and that all the fun happens at night.
It is also interesting as when the night hits, and many people correlate that to the fact that

people are more vulnerable and the best example for such are casino's and how they never

have bright lights because that puts more formality to the event. You will never see many

people dancing or enjoying themselves in the day compared to night. Many believe that is a

result of the sun that creates orders and due to the working hours being in the day.

This is also important for the understanding that many believe they can function better at

night. But is that efficient with lack of sleep? I don't think so. So, my campaign focuses on

challenging those aspects. Also, to bring to notice that many people get affected by the

mental health problems due to college life, and sometimes lack of sleep can compromise the

ability to feel energized and happy. When one gets enough sleep, research shows better

moods, along with a better heart rate. Also, muscle recovery. This is because the hormones

go out of place due to lack of sleep, and our bodies are like chargers. If we overuse or keep it

running all night, that would lead to overheating. And that, therefore, damages many abilities

of a charger; therefore, when you keep using it that way, it tends to give out easy. That is the

same way our mood’s function. The more rest we gain, the better our hormone balance is,

and that leads to happier moods, along with more patients. When it comes to muscle

recovery, our body needs to recharge, and if we don't, there is more water retention, and that

also happens due to binge eating at night.

Lack of sleep is something that college students are facing on a daily basis. According

to[ CITATION Sle21 \l 1033 ], college students are sleeping less and don’t have a healthy sleep

schedule. The health of the individual is directly affected and the student does not even

realise. Not getting enough has been proven to a spike in weight gains to college students.

College students are known to gain 15 pounds in their first year as the “Freshmen 15”
rumour. Not being able to get enough sleep also gives birth to laziness. Which is the start of

obesity. According to [ CITATION Sle21 \l 1033 ], about 35% of adults across the nation are

not able to get proper sleep. That is a big number and that means that 35% of adults across

the nation are already approaching towards the unhealthy side of themselves. 35% accounts

84 million adults getting less than 7 hours of sleep [ CITATION Sle21 \l 1033 ]. Getting enough

sleep helps avoid major diseases to the human body and college is not the place where you

want to get infected by major diseases because that is an age where you want to try doing

everything. Being a college myself, I find enough sleep to be one of the most important

things of my life. When I get 8 hours of sleep compared to 5 or 6 hours of sleep, there is a

huge difference. It’s about the energy you need to get through the day.

The actual scene at college is that college students are piled up with endless assignments that

are sometimes due the next day itself. It’s as if your life depended on it because they are

worth a fortune of your grades. A lack of sleep has led to bad grades for college students

because they aren’t able to really focus in class. Sleep deprivation is a an actual illness in the

nation due to many people not being able to sleep an healthy amount of hours. Your body

makes it a habit to only sleep for a certain number of hours. And all of this leads to certain

college students with sleep deprivation a lower GPA and unhappy college memories.

According to [ CITATION Sle21 \l 1033 ], a lack of sleep can also lead to mental health

problems. 44% of college students experience symptoms of depression [ CITATION Sle21 \l

1033 ]. Depression is also a very serious illness where the individual experiencing it faces life

threatening situations where they actually risk taking their lives. Their lives are just dull and

not fun. So as we can see, a lack of sleep has led to depressed college students. Sometimes

there are instances where a lack of sleep can cause or lead to mental health problems like
anxiety because anxiety kills your sleep. You can’t sleep in the night when you’re really

anxious about something. And this could lead to bad moods, thus not being able to focus on

your education when that is your number one priority.

Drowsy driving is another issue caused by a lack of sleep because if you don’t get enough

sleep, you would not be able to focus on driving yourself and that would lead to nothing but

accidents where you end up hurting yourself. The AAA foundation for Traffic safety has

found out that 80% of college students get into accidents due to drowsy driving [ CITATION

Sle21 \l 1033 ]. 80% is a big number and there are still some college students that neglect the

problems that are caused by a lack of sleep. Take the example of drunk driving; drowsy

driving is basically the same thing because your visual senses are impaired. That counts for

thousands of accidents when college students are either going back home or getting to

college. Now it is proved that a lack of sleep is deadly and can cause harm to your lives.

Some people just don’t feel the need to take care of themselves everyday but only take all

care of themselves on the weekends which is wrong because it is should be a balanced

process and not a two day process. It is important to sleep evenly every night because your

body needs the same amount of rest everyday with your existing weekly schedule. You

should be able to take care of yourself in college especially because it is an early age and it is

easier to adapt to changes at this age. Once you get older let’s say 45 or something, you

would not be able to adapt to changes much easier than you can now because your body is 25

years in the habit of doing certain things that you want to change.

According to [ CITATION Rob19 \l 1033 ], roughly 20% of college students are likely to face

mental health problems due to lack of sleep. Mental health problems at an early age are
considered to be abnormal because most people get mental health problems when they are

having a mid-life crisis while working and having a family to feed. This is getting serious to a

point where college is having an adverse effect over their students’ brains. We cannot blame

the college over here but the students themselves as it is important to have a balance between

your daily activities as an imbalance in that is why college students have a lack of sleep.

An interesting study by Dr. Michael Grandner about 110,000 college students shows that an

19% to 29% increase of mental health problems are linked to lack of sleep, with a 19%

increase in loneliness caused by lack of sleep, depressed moods increased by 21%, anxiety

increased by 25%, desire to self-harm increased by 25% and exhaustion increased by 29%

[ CITATION Rob19 \l 1033 ]. This shows how serious lack of sleep is because now it also

causes loneliness. This is because you do not really live if you’re half asleep and are drowsy

so basically you won’t have time to hang out with your friends due to your depressed moods.

Lack of sleep is related to loneliness because you have no one but yourself when you can’t

sleep as your other friends are already asleep. You become demotivated to speak to people

because you feel lonely and have anxiety as well. Imagine this situation on an actual college

student. A college student already has a hectic schedule because of their classes and

assignments and lack of sleep as an additional burden in their lives. There have been nights

where I have not been able to sleep due to my assignments and I just feel really exhausted

and six for the next few days. This causes a disturbance to my schedule and I have to take

extra care of myself.

College students are extremely sleep deprived and exhausted but there are many people that

consider that Routine to be normal. It is not something to be happy about. People that

consider this routine are mostly victims of narcolepsy. This means that they are associated
with an illness where they are always drowsy throughout their days. Is that a life a college

student would want to live? Daily late nights and waking up early for classes is this

imbalance that makes it tough for your brain to function. There is a chemical imbalance in

your brain that causes for such mood changes [ CITATION Rob19 \l 1033 ]. An imbalance in

chemicals in your brain in the long term can cause much serious problems like brain tumour

and other types of diseases that fall in the deadly criteria. College students have taken less

sleep or no sleep as a joke and have stood by its throughout their college lives. Your entire

body equation changes when you try to temper with your sleep because it is very important to

your body. Some people even lose a lot of weight due to exhaustion caused by lack of sleep.

Sleep is basically a luxury good for college students because most of them cannot afford it. It

is not able being able to afford it or not but to make changes with yourself so that you are in

control of your own health. Being able to sleep on time and waking up on time is the way to

live life because that is how you can plan your day and get most of your day. Life is too short

to be on such habits where you do not even know what is happening around you. Sometimes

students fail to recognize what sleep deprivation is doing to them as in where you open your

body to infections and have a slowed reaction time. It’s better to get enough sleep then act

like you’ve been hallucinating. That just makes you look different in public where you don’t

know what you are doing most of the times and are busy in your own bubble of life. So,

hence, it is better to sleep on time then make an unhealthy choice which could impact you

heavily.

For my campaign, I thought of challenging those motor skills along with how many students

bottle up their feelings instead of speaking to a professional because they feel that it would

make them lower in terms of the friends they are with. I know many people who struggle to

open up to a professional because they are more worried about what others would think of
them. Similar to how many people who do not attend parties and focus more on studying and

getting their GPA'S up are looked down upon and not invited to many parties. Night outs are

a forum for bringing social and popular. I know this through personal interviews, which I

thought would benefit from understanding how and why college students bottle up and, if

they would, who would they turn towards to open up about how they feel. So, I also thought

it is vital to incorporate parents into my campaign.

My campaign idea began with me trying to understand why so many advertisements mention

not to drive when you are sleepy, as it is similar to driving drunk (Appendix 1). More than

40% of individuals die only due to drowsy driving. Now, this is critical cause look at how the

comparison is taken all the way to be intoxicated and therefore, we are most vulnerable. Also,

the likely hood of driving drowsy by age is very astonishing as 80% of age groups between

18-29 drive drowsy while ages from 30-64 are 52% and 19% of age groups with 65+ ages

(Appendix 2). This is interesting as college groups are filled with confidence, saying

statements like what can one drink do or just one more hour of no sleep or one more can of

caffeine. I also had a personal experience with such a situation. At once, I did not realize my

body was beyond its capacity of having energy, and I drove. At a point, I realized I was

dozing off, and that scared me tremendously. That is when I realized I would never drive

unless I have gotten the right amount of sleep. (Appendix 3) shows the impact of drowsy

driving on the road and how we start to see things when we are not getting enough sleep. It is

interesting how our judgement gets compromised.

So, coming to the outline of my campaign, I thought of first focusing on making a very

attractive pamphlet. This is because I would not want to overload the people with information

making it enjoyable for them to come and have a look at the campaign on how exactly it
would be. This is also a marketing skill as I would not put it all there in one go keeping some

suspense. Therefore, my pamphlet would have words like "let us make sleeping less fun", and

that would have a subtext saying, "sleeping less is injurious to health" (Appendix 4: example

of pamphlet). After which, I have a few sessions for parents first to attend. I believe this is

important because they should the impact and what is going on in their children's lives.

Nurturing and the change that comes from is the most long term and effective way to keep

the positive outcome constantly coming in. This is also because I feel many people do attend

these campaigns and retreats, and once they are out of it, they go back to their regular routine.

And my aim of this is to keep it an ongoing program. So, I would like to get to the parents

and show them some techniques that would help reduce the stress on their college-going and

teenagers at home, which could also help them. Since the world is always running at a fast

pace, not many have the time to really take care of themselves as everything is about

working. So, I would also hire some professionals for the help of their credibility and

knowledge to show in a visual sense of what happens to the brain when they do not get that

sleep that is needed.

Along with some experts who would give a bonus if they attend the campaign. They would

receive a complimentary subscription to some helpful tips that promote better sleep and a

peaceful mind before sleeping. Since technology is continually growing, I thought of using

that too to try and get to the customer base. After which, I would then choose two candidates

who would volunteer only to get 2-4 hours of sleep and two candidates who would get 6-9

hours of sleep. And then have them do some motor skills like puzzle solving, which takes a

maximum of 10 minutes. After which, they would have to do some motor skills like passing a

ball through tubes by connecting them to each other. This would help see how they can get

things from one place to another just by that task. After which, they would have to use a
spoon and support a piece of marble getting it across from point A to B in 2 minutes to see

how many times they can do this, and this would impact the concentration level they would

need for such an activity. And lastly, I would have remote controlled cars, which they would

have to carefully take through a narrow path to see how well they can control motor. This

challenges the brain to hand signaling and see how this gets compromised.

Since I wanted to prove that my activity is functional, I had a run-through with my friends

and family. Where I got 2 hours of sleep along with my two other friends. And two of my

cousins were the ones who got 9 hours of sleep while my mother was hosting the event. It

was very fascinating to see how we did it as there was a lot of fun involved in it too.

Shockingly my friends and I, who got significantly less sleep, could not get the car to be in

the same path and were not able to concentrate on taking the marble from one place to

another without dropping many. While I could get only three across, and my cousin, who got

the most sleep, got the maximum of 8 across in 2 minutes, that shows how your brain

functions at a maximum of 20-30% capacity when you do not get sleep. While solving the

puzzles, the team that got no sleep were prolonged as we all concluded that we were

perplexed and zoning out. Therefore, this built my confidence in the fact that it would be a

positive experience for all and would be a fun learning experience. It is essential to learn self-

care before worrying too much about what society thinks of you. And so, I plan on also

having a motivational speaker who would try and build individuality in the college students

and help them in not getting under the pressure of life and their peers but instead keep self-

care on the top of the hierarchy.

Even though I have a very lengthy campaign idea, I plan on implementing it on a weekday as

that is when the students tend to get the least amount of sleep without being able to rest the
next day; this also means stress levels are high, which help my campaign have a better

impact. I would also be sending a proposal to the university to have a monthly or bimonthly

session about work-life balance. I have heard this a lot from my peer's parents and older

members of the family how students these days, along with young employees, do not

understand the impact of the mental situation on work. Therefore, universities and schools

should implicate work-life balance in their curriculum. This is precisely how we received sex

education in classes in high school to try and educate us on safe sex and understand ourselves

better. But my question is, why does this have to be only in terms of physical health? In fact,

mental health and such factors as sleep and anxiety are the root cause for more extensive

problems. And I feel they should be addressed because of which I think this should be added

and would be sending a proposal for the same. This is also impactful since it would try and

get them prepared for more enormous obstacles that they will have to face, which includes

being stressed with work resulting in them not being able to sleep. I also feel professors

should have their students who have to give in large assignments. They should have them

have it submitted in sections so that in the end, it can all come together at a pace and result in

better quality.

In conclusion, I feel this would be a very doable and innovative idea to teach as I believe no

one learns without a practical lesson. And if given an opportunity, I would love to execute

such an event, just as Bryant is always supportive of new ideas and always have very

educational campaigns. This would be just as par with them. Sleep is essential, and lack of

sleep can do more harm than what is known, and I feel its severity is not given enough credit

for. Sleep is a steep hill that can go downwards. In terms of the impact, it has on the brain,

and with coming age, there has been a decline in motor skills, physical activities, along with

memory span. Therefore, to avoid becoming robotic and to be able to enjoy the small sections
of lives without having any energy to do so, I would encourage everyone to be well-rested

every day so that you won't miss out on a brighter day filled with activities and memories. As

one's body and mind are a temple, cherish it and try and prolong the impacts of damaging it.
Appendix

Appendix 1:

Appendix 2:
Appendix 3:
Appendix 4: Self-made pamphlet for the campaign
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