There is a lot of talk about the HFMD breakout in Singapore these days. It is terrible how quickly such a disease can spread in a densely populated urban environment like ours. Hopefully we get it under control soon.
A more insidious problem among our young people today I think is chronic sleep deprivation. There has been a lively exchange of comments on this in the newspapers this week. The long and short of it all is that almost everyone agrees that our young people are short of sleep.
Don’t know if most of you can remember a film in the 80s ‘Wall Street’ where a character Gordon Gecko (love the name!) represented what it means to succeed at all costs. His mantra ‘greed is good’ manifests itself in wonderfully catchy phrases like “lunch is for wimps” which embodies this drive and determination to succeed.
It seems to me that many of our young people today hold that same attitude when it comes to sleep. Sleep apparently is for wimps. Young people who sleep too much are seen as lazy and unmotivated. sometimes by their parents, but more often than not, even by themselves. It makes me slightly sad when I ask some of my students what they like to do more of, but can’t and they answer half seriously, “sleep”. I think we only need to look at our young people on buses or trains and we can see them catching whatever opportunity to catch ‘forty winks’.
So we hear constantly that our students get 4 – 5 hours of sleep a night. Surely that is not enough! I know that the recommended amount of time for young people is around 9 hours. 9 hours! Where do they find the time?
I know some young people sleep very little because of their own trivial pursuits (sorry!). So if it is navigating ‘Facebook’, ‘Second Life’ or ‘World of Warcraft’, then too bad! You cause your own grief. These things can be addictive. I know. Long, long time ago when dinosaurs ruled the earth and I was a young person, I remember the early days of computer games, I spent a few nights conquering the 3 kingdoms instead of sleeping. So I paid the price the next day.
But for many young people, sleep deprivation has become endemic. Sometimes they have urgent school work that needs completion. Then they convince themselves that they really don’t need that much sleep. Then they push themselves to do more each night. All in the name of succeeding in school. Where does this cycle end?
The virtues of sleep have been heralded many a time. But we are not listening. Maybe because the benefits are not immediately tangible. In this age if instant gratitification, we have a problem with this. If the benefits are not immediately apparent, we are not convinced. But sleep is a beautiful thing isn’t it? We often don’t appreciate it enough unless we get deprived of it. That idea in ‘Macbeth’ that he has murdered sleep is truly terrible. It implies that we are so racked by something that our minds are so troubled that we can’t rest. After all, sleep deprivation is knowen to be effective form of torture!
I have chronic panda eyes and as a result look permanently sleep deprived. I am. I get about 6 hours of sleep a night on average on weekdays. I suspect many of my students get less than this. But I love sleep. Very little gives me as much enjoyment as a wonderful night of uninterrupted sleep. My excuse is that I am old and perhaps don’t need as much sleep. I know, it sounds almost hypocritical, but I do try to ‘catch up’ on weekends. Anyway, i do think that we need less sleep as we grow older. As a student, I definitely needed my sleep. Burning the midnight oil was a no go for me. My brain needed to go on sleep mode for a requisite number of hours a night. Otherwise I crash. I did well in school partly because I found the time to sleep sufficiently.
Yes, too much sleep is not good too. It makes us sluggish and lazy. I have no doubts on that. But in a fast paced society like Singapore, this is hardly an issue for most people.
Once in a while, we may need to sleep less to finish something urgent. Thankfully that happens to me very infrequently. More frequent is Champions’ league nights, but that’s another issue altogether! But it cannot be a habit. It’s just not healthy or even effective in the long run.
Let’s provide the best conditions for success. We all want to suceeed. Let’s sleep on it.
You are so funny I HAVE to reply.
I like your blog. It is one of the ONLY intellectual blogs around that don’t try to act clever and slander the government/USA.
Although, I may be what you consider, a ‘virtual enemy’.
How do we expect to sleep if we are expected to spit out an MSG of >3 by the end of this year? When we were expecting to get by with an overall of 65%, more of our sleep is taken away.
I’m not protesting. I’m just pointing out that the workload is indeed too expansive, I mean, EXPENSIVE. The currency is sleep.
The average I get is around 3-5 hours a day. 5 is bliss.
6-7 on weekends.
But I struggle with my grades. Which is why I need to work hard. Maybe you should find some wonderful scholarly (pun intended) representative from the student body that scores 7 A1s AND sleeps 9 hours a day.
Presumably living in the boarding school, because it is boring as hel- HADES. Down there. I mean, OVER there.
But in our scholarly institution (read: school) Sucess means sleeping less.
There is absolutely not way you can scored and MSG >3 if we ’slept on it’.
As a student, I suggest you go boil those words, mush it up and drink it like pudding.
^^v
No offence intended.
Ha! Ha! None taken. Student life is hard. I don’t doubt that. I see it every day. From your point of view, it may seem that I don’t understand. I probably don’t. No one can fully profess to. But time management is something that is very individual. I am not convinced about your claims. Be happy to engage you on this if you are prepared to.
What claims?
Yes, I must agree that time management is vital, and that I am epic failure at it.
You probably can understand the lack of sleep, but not the stress we go through.
Once again, I will not engage you on this either.
I tried sleeping at 10 for one entire term, and it works. I was more alert, yadayada. It’s true, and I advocate sleeping early as much as possible.
However, the reality stands that that was Term 1, and I am but a simple, common student with no other responsibilities. Sleeping the healthy hours is virtually impossible if you want to go a good, respectable and high-scoring student. I won’t blame things like CCA or school workload, but I see the trend stemming from the education system’s demands of a student that is well-rounded yet excelling at everything.
I’ve stopped trying to sleep my 8 hours, because it’s hard to finish my SIAs and get my MSG of 3 and below if I do.
(:
SQUIDWARD FTW!
Dear sir,
I would like to express some minor concerns of my own. Firstly, let’s start with a personal anecdote. One windy night, with the leaves on the trees rustling and the full moon glowing onto my SIA report, I decided to retire at 10pm. However, much to my confusion and distress, the following day I became even more sleepy than when i slept at like 3am, stumbling around in lethargy in the quadrangle. What is wrong?
A concaved spirit
Concave Spirit: Sleep cycles.
Our body rests in multiple cycles of 90 minutes. If the cycle is near termination when you wake up, you will feel rested. Even if it was only 90minutes.
However, if you break the cycle anywhere in the middle (or during some specific time which I cannot recall), you will feel even more tired than when you had only napped for 90 minutes.
Hey, this entry is interesting.
I find that I’m sleeping later this year (because I engage in frivolousness like watching Gossip Girl videos) than last year.
Iridescence, I think you have issues. It’s not meant to offend, but I think you are very unhappy in school
Stay strong, cos I think that your friends are in this with you, no?
AND BTW I SLEPT BY 11PM NEARLY EVERY NIGHT LAST YEAR.
And my grades aren’t fantastic, but they’re decent. My MSG was 2. I’ve never gotten below a 3 ever okay. So eh 65%, is okay. It isn’t difficult, you just need to put in effort. The school pushes you cos they know you can do it.
Seriously, I find that the criteria of 65% is too low, actually. But that’s just me.
*choke*….you. get. on. my. nerves.
No, I am very happy with my life. I entertain myself by being really cynical and picking on everything. Hey, did you know, my MSG last year was 5. In 4 months, I think I lowered it to 3pointsomething.
I’m not being bitter and resentful because I can’t reach an overall MSG of >3. (I’m going to prove it to the world I can. Did you know- my -huge- improvement in grades was a subject of staffroom gossip? Teachers I don’t know come up to me to encourage me.)
By the way, your arguement is fallacious. You are using yourself, a single case to overthrow my argument. (Although I could say the same for my own.) But still.
>>Of course I have issues. I think.
Stay strong? I get offended when people insult my emotional capability. I’m not some emotional radical so badly bullied by the school I’m lashing out at anyone on The Dark Side.
Read my comment #64 on the latest post.
I hope you understand and stop labelling me. If you want to convince someone, it is best to pretend you understand, so that th person will listen to you.
I’m complacent, bitter, have issues and weak.
False, True, True, False.
But of course, think what you like. What does it matter?
My dignity will prove itself.
-I have more to say.
“And my grades aren’t fantastic, but they’re decent. My MSG was 2. I’ve never gotten below a 3 ever okay. So eh 65%, is okay. It isn’t difficult, you just need to put in effort. The school pushes you cos they know you can do it.
Seriously, I find that the criteria of 65% is too low, actually. But that’s just me.”
You’ve never gotten below a three. Ever. OKAY.
Not everybody is like you. The world revolves around it’s core of magma. Are you magma?
Dimwits like me struggle hard. I don’t think my MSG was ever equal or below three. What does that say about me?
Did you update yourself? It isn’t 65% overall anymore. It’s 65% FOR EVERYTHING. MSG >3 baby.
Although I was suffocating from indignance from your comment about me, I must still thank you for trying to make life sound as easy as you say it is, so that I would think the world is a better place. Thank you for trying to be nice. And encouraging me.
Pardon my resentful reply. I’m sure you can find excuses for me. Use them.
Hey, s, maybe MSG 3 is easy for you, but it’s not for others. Last year, nearly half of 3/6 had to drop a science, if what I’ve heard is true. And then? We only had to get 60%, which was so much easier. Just because you never had problems with your studies doesn’t mean that others do not.
And, it’s not 65% anymore, it’s MSG 3 and below.
Also, on the topic of sleep, I try to sleep at/by 11, and have experienced some amount of success this year, but sometime last week I stayed up to rush some project or other and have since, found it easier to stay up past midnight, and find it hard to sleep before midnight, which is what I was like last year, and what I’m trying to change this year. ):
But anyway, we do not have enough sleep, really, but this problem is not only restricted to students–adults do not get enough sleep either, and I do understand that teachers stay up late and everything as well, so maybe the academic route is torturous like that. I think it’d be great to have some mass sleeping session in school! We can knock off CME and PCCG time for an hour of sleep in the auditorium, it’d be brilliant! Nice cushy seats! Nice air-conditioning! Etc.
I swear that would make the students love the school management forever–or, maybe not, some might want the time to study, in which case they can escape to the library.
s: Google ‘lament of the median student’. It’ll do you a world of good.
about the sleeping 4-5 hours a day thing, i think most of the students sleep less than that. much less, i know of people who’re getting 1s who sleep less than an hour a day. it’s crazy to be have to fulfill your other external commitments, which sometimes can be more important than what they ’sign you up’ in school, and on top of school work project meetings etcetcetc. it’s perfectly normal, to me, if we have to struggle to decide what should we do first and stuff like that, its fine. but if facilitators from school intervene with something like, every have the same amount of time, it just boils down to how do you manage. that is what that gets on my nerve.
students keep getting compared, and are thrown in their faces with statements like, there’re are people out there who are stretched further than you do. personally, being stretched in one direction is okay, but being stretched in many directions, more than 5 even, that is what that kills you.
it makes my blood boil when i see teachers assume that there are people who are stretched further than some do, but they do not consider other factors.
if a rubber glove is stretched in one direction, it makes it very hard to tear, it may not even tear. but imagine 10 different pair of hands stretch it at the same it, it’ll definitely tear.
life is not part of school, but school is part of life. but i see many of my peers slaving away, literally for all the A1s. i don’t see a point in all these grades.
9 hours of sleep is impossible. that is not even the amount of sleep i’m getting 7 days put together, let alone 9 hours of sleep every 24hours.
And Ms Hello has taken the words right from my heart.
Seniors, you are very clever. Good for you.
We aren’t.