What Is College Expectations Versus Reality?

College or higher education is a valued tool for preparing individuals as they become adults with an organized environment conducive for gaining independence, knowledge and skills to make their own way, be employed and help society. Attaining higher education opens doors and gives an individual numerous opportunities and benefits. This is the time wherein students invest their time, effort and energy to the hope of a bright and successful future by studying and learning. This valued tool is not free, considering the increasing tuition fees and rising debts of students, hence the need for college to be as productive as possible.
College Expectation versus Reality
College gives a lot of advantages but not all students are prepared for college.
More than half of the students in college report that they are exhausted, sleepy, and dragging. Usually, students who go through academic difficulties and inadequate sleep are unaware of the degree of impairment this practice causes in completing cognitive tasks. Lack of sleep leads to sleepiness and defective performance in terms of the neurocognitive and psychomotor aspects which increases the risk of students to have impaired decision-making skills, memory, and learning. (BaHammam et al., 2012). Daytime sleepiness and sleep deprivation can result to consequences such as the decrease of grades and increased risk of failing. Students tend to have reduced amount of attention span and have difficulty concentrating thus leads to poor academic performance evaluated by teachers and students themselves. (Willingham,
Sleep plays a vital role in a person’s life; it is a basic need as a human being as well as a requirement for survival. Sleep helps maintain the normal activity of the brain and the homeostasis of its different areas. Sleep is important for the person’s motor and cognitive skills to function normally. The number of hours of sleep most adults need is known to be 7 to 8 hours each night in order to feel well rested and ready to begin the day’s work (Phillips, 2006). Getting adequate sleep during the night is associated with an individual’s ability to function during the day thereby decreasing the amount of sleep less than 7 hours may lead to depression, decrease in motivation and compromising health, thus affecting an individual’s performance negatively. Students are well affected of sleep deprivation thus making sleep a big factor in the performance in school.
In this study, the researchers explored the deeper effects of sleep in the day to day lives of students including performance in school or academics, other stress factors or contributing factors to sleep deprivation. Research