Sleep Deprivation in Students: Issue Paper

Emily Bedenkop

Eleanor Harte

April 27, 2013

Lack of sleep can cause someone to take a snooze in class, or it can cause someone to divorce their wife, gamble their money away, and make a series of bad decisions. This was the case for Peter Tripp, a radio DJ who stayed awake for 201 hours in 1959 to break a “wake-a-thon” record. While college students generally don’t take their sleep deprivation to that extent, they are harming themselves and impairing their studies by failing to sleep an adequate amount, says University of Massachusetts Amherst psychology professor Rebecca Spencer.

Sophomore environmental science and BDIC in environmental advocacy and policy double major Arianna Moscone said that chronic sleep deprivation has taken its toll on her academic performance and physical health. “I’ve been trying to get better,” she said. “I’ve been going to bed an hour earlier than I usually do because I know that the effects it had on my body last semester. I need to make my body rest. I’m still really tired all the time though.”

Spencer and others at UMass Amherst have conducted research on the effects of sleep on memory and complex cognitive skills like decision-making. According to Spencer, the way the brain revisits information while you are asleep helps to solidify information and make for more informed decisions. The process of called memory consolidation, the way the brain combines  information from multiple sources like in-class lectures and related homework readings, is important for the retention of facts. Compromising sleep in favor of staying up all night to study for an exam means giving up the long-term benefits to memory of sleep.

“If you learn something and then you fall asleep you’re going to recall more than if you stay awake. If you study something before sleep tonight, not only will you be able to better recall it in the morning, but you’ll also be able to better recall it during that cumulative exam at the end of the semester,” said Spencer.

“The latest I stay up before an exam is two, and I usually try to go to bed at like eight or nine, said sophomore finance major Jillian Wybanga, who prioritizes sleep over last-minute studying before important exams. “I’m basically a grandmother.”

Adrienne Breef-Pilz, a senior biology major, is a resident assistant and an athlete on the rowing team. She wakes up at 5:45 a.m. for her practices, and said that she sleeps for between four to six hours a night. Some people on her team, Breef-Pilz said, get even less. “Some people will be in the library doing homework at two or three a.m., or they’ll say, ‘Oops, I pulled another all-nighter.’”

‘Pulling an all-nighter’ can be beneficial for some in terms of short-term exam performance,” said UMass PhD candidate Akshata Sonni, who is studying neuroscience and behavior and conducts research on sleep and memory with Spencer in the UMass Cognition and Action (“Cognac”) Lab. “But it really depends on an individual student’s goal in learning information and studying. “That information will never get filed away, and you’ll never remember it after that exam’s over; by the end of the day you would have forgotten most of it,” said Sonni.  

Spencer said that for some, staying awake to study can potentially have short-term drawbacks, though. “The worst thing, though, you can do is sleep deprive yourself to study. That’s when you’ll sleep through the exam, or be inattentive during the exam. That’s the problem with an all-nighter,” Spencer said.

Moscone, though, said she often relies on this method. “Sometimes there’s just physically not enough time during the day for me to study for that exam so I sort of have no choice but to stay up all night, and that also has to do with procrastination. Sometimes I’ll take an exam and leave and just not remember anything and think I did okay, and then end up doing horribly.”

In addition to the brain’s ability to better solidify previously learned information while you are asleep, it is easier to accrue new knowledge when well rested.

“Not only do you need sleep, just your normal healthy amount of sleep to consolidate what you’ve just learned, but you also need the sleep and the lack of sleep deprivation in order to stay focused and attentive,” said Spencer. She emphasized that the benefits of sleep and the impairing effects of sleep deprivation were two independent processes. “That’s not saying the same thing two different ways; they are independent. You need both of them.”

The amount of sleep needed for decision-making and memory varies from person to person and changes with age.  College students are technically still in the upper limits of adolescence, said Sonni, and therefore need more sleep than older adults. “I think a very small percentage of college students actually get nine hours of sleep. Most college students are chronically sleep deprived,” Sonni said.

College students’ schedules are very busy, said Sonni, explaining that time spent on classes, extracurriculars, homework, and social life leaves little time for sleep.

“I really think that college students, if they get less sleep, choose to get less sleep. There’s a fair amount of procrastination, and that happens mostly during the day. Then you make up for it at night when you’re doing work because during the day you were socializing. At night when you should be sleeping you’re catching up on all that,” said Wybanga.

Procrastination for Moscone is largely due to what she terms “FOMO”: the fear of missing out. This especially affected her while making new friends during her first year of college; “I was like, well everyone’s still hanging out and I’m tired, but I’m going to stay up until everyone else goes to sleep because I don’t want to miss anything,” Moscone said.

For Breef-Pilz, that lack of sleep affects her both her athletic and academic performance. “It affects us much more than we’d like to admit,” she said with regard to her team’s collective lack of sleep.

While most students can wake up right before class, Breef-Pilz said, she has to work out for an hour and a half every morning before lecture; by that point, she’s already tired. “Falling asleep in lecture is definitely a problem for me,” she said. “I’ve dozed off during exams.”

“Students who sleep deprive themselves during the week, and then make up for it on the weekend, they’re doing themselves a disservice, because then on Monday they’ve reduced their sleep load and lost their ability to sleep. Their sleep load is gone,” said Spencer. These students, she said, proceed to sleep an inadequate amount and repeat the process week by week.

In reality, said Moscone, catching up on sleep on weekends is not entirely feasible, because sleeping in is balanced by staying out and going to bed later.

More important than a set minimum amount of sleep is a consistent sleep schedule, said Spencer and Sonni, which differs for every person. This can consist of a regular bedtime or napping to compensate for less overnight sleep.

“I nap every day. I’ll even take a nap in the bus on the way to practice,” said Breef-Pilz.

Naps can sometimes have the adverse effect of getting you out of your normal sleep rhythm, said Spencer. But being attuned to attentiveness and physical exhaustion is important, Sonni said, because when you feel like you need to rest you probably do.

Habitually napping, or using naps to compensate for not enough sleep can be beneficial. Said Spencer, “Naps can have the same benefit as overnight sleep. All these functions - memory consolidation, better decision making - all of those functions you can get from a nap, even a very short nap.”

Said Wybanga, “I nap probably like twice a week. I’d like to nap everyday.”

Students’ interactions bring life to annual class trip to Sicily

Emily Bedenkop

April 3, 2013

Tucked away into a corner of Rome’s Fiumicino airport on a recent weekday was a small encampment of exhausted students, lying across one another and trading backrubs, hair braids, and the scraps of food they could afford with their limited supply of remaining euros. Just 10 days before, these same students were self-segregated by school, alternating awkwardly getting to know one another and wandering the same airport to look at the limited assortment of duty-free stores.

For 16 years, students from the University of Massachusetts Amherst have traveled to Sicily each spring semester as part of a course on travel writing and photojournalism. Harford art majors concentrating in illustration and photography have been joining the UMass group for over a decade. Getting to know one another and residents of the small Sicilian towns visited are highlights of the annual trip, students said.

Though the itinerary of visits to temples, museums and wineries in small towns from the mountains to the seaside varies from year to year, these slight changes are balanced by how the same people have always coordinated the trip. Their familiarity with each other and the general experience makes the trip run smoothly.

“We started planning this trip on the plane ride home last year,” said Hartford Art School Associate Professor Jeremiah Patterson.

Patterson, a renowned watercolor painter with work exhibited throughout the country, is also a UMass graduate. He traveled to Yucatan as an undergraduate with Rick Newton, who has coordinated UMass programs going to Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and now Sicily since 1991. Newton, known for the extra memory cards he carries for over-shooting photographers, was nicknamed “Salty” by students amused by the number of things that bother him, like plastic bags “ruining” scenic shots.

As photography instructor, Newton shares the UMass class with Carol Connare, director of Development and Communications for the UMass Library. Connare has taught the travel-writing component for three years, and after the trip works with the writers to create a magazine of their work and students’ photography. This magazine is in addition to each student’s final project, a portfolio composed of short vignettes and either photography or lengthier feature stories, depending on the class section.

In the months before the actual trip to Sicily, the two alternated teaching together on Sicilian history and culture, and dividing the 16-person class into its writing and photography sections for more technical instruction.

“Rick taught me an overwhelming amount in an extremely short period of time,” said junior journalism and English double-major Kyle Little, who admitted he had been worried about barely knowing how to operate his newly purchased digital camera. Pre-trip photography classes involved learning to control depth of field, blur or stop motion, and avoid using what Newton calls “dummy mode” – the completely automatic setting – at all costs, said Little.

Junior journalism major Lindsay Davis is the UMass teaching assistant this year, and decided to concentrate on photography because she was in the writing section last year. Returning to the course and Sicily for a second year, said Davis, gave her the opportunity to reflect on Sicily, rather than just touring. Davis said that experiencing small towns like Castelbuono, the residents of which invited students to join their Saint Joseph’s Day celebration, made her realize how close-knit Sicilian communities are compared to the large UMass campus.

Senior illustration major Michele Epstein is the teaching assistant for Hartford, and like Davis felt drawn back to the class and the island; “To me it kind of seems like the trip was on a separate time, kind of like the rest of the world paused when we were there. Going a second time it seemed to go by even quicker,” said Epstein.

Other students had reflective experiences like Davis, returning to school with a different perspective because of their travels. “I don't feel as concerned with some of the things that used to bug me, now they seem more minor and insignificant,” said Andy Bates, a junior illustration major at Hartford.

Like Bates, senior accounting major Felisha Amato said that being exposed to a different way of life in Sicily made her less enthusiastic for upcoming academic obligations; “Comparing my life to the lives of the Sicilians in small towns made me question why I do the things I do and what is most important to me. I almost wonder if living in some sort of ignorance is easier.”

For the majority of students traveling to Sicily for the first time, the class’s balance between academics and touring made for an ideal traveling experience. “The opportunity for three credits and the prospect of active travel writing and photography was intriguing,” Little said when asked what incited him to apply for enrollment. Though the trip costs nearly three thousand dollars, said Little, “Looking back it was worth every cent.”

During the 10 days of the students’ trip, they traveled from the capital of Palermo in the northwest to Taormina at the base of Mt. Etna on the northeast coast, from which you can see the boot of Italy. Small pockets of pale yellow stucco buildings with red-orange roof tiles and green doors compose the towns in between, nestled into the mountainous interior of the island and along the rocky cliffs and beaches of the coast. Balconies adorn nearly every window, providing locals with the chance to socialize, hang laundry, and cool off in the Mediterranean climate that yields summer temperatures well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Students seized the chance to wear shorts and sundresses in the sunny warmth of Sicilian springtime, drawing more confused stares than ever from natives still bundled up in wool coats.

“The landscape and atmosphere was so different from anything I had previously been used to that I was like a sponge soaking everything in that I could all trip long,” said Bates.

What is referred to as the “Sicilian Team” on the UMass course’s website transforms the trip from a class tour, bringing life to and personalizing the traveling experience. Rosa Rizza, the Durgan Travel Service tour guide, strikes the perfect balance between affectionate and informative; “She quickly became a second mother to me,” said Bates. Though a Sicilian by birth and spirit, Rizza spent her adolescence in Connecticut. She has the perspective of someone who has lived as both an outsider and insider, not to mention the bilingualism.

In addition to fielding the group’s questions about Italian politics, for example, Rizza lectured on topics ranging from Greek and Roman theaters to the mythology of Mt. Etna. The mountain is an active volcano believed to be the home of cyclopes under which lies the forges of Hephaestus, god of fire and metalwork.  

Also key to the trip was Mario Fili, who owns the bus company and acts as driver for the trip. Fili is remarkable for his ever-present smile, good-natured mockery of students’ Italian pronunciations, and wearing a suit while negotiating the bus through the narrow winding Sicilian roads throughout the week. This year’s trip was the first to include a visit to Fili’s hometown of Alimena, where he had requested the ceremonial decorations of St. Joseph’s Day to remain intact for an unprecedented extra day so the students could see them.

“The man knows what's going on and pulls a lot of strings, all while remaining unimposing,” said Bates.

St. Joseph was known for feeding the poor, so the symbolic offerings of bread, oranges, and pasta placed before a painting of him and the infant Jesus in Alimena were a fitting celebration. St. Joseph’s Day doubles as the Italian Father’s Day and a tribute to this generosity to the poor. Each year on this day towns across Sicily have lunch together, with a few people preparing a simple meal to be shared by whoever wants to join.

Many students on the trip this year had never traveled outside of the United States or North America before, making the trip to Sicily more unique and increasing the necessity of guidance.

“When you travel it’s not the country that has to adapt to you, you have to adapt to the country. That’s how you become international. And be international, it’s more fun,” said Rizza.

Partaking in an olive oil tasting with Rizza’s parents and meeting one of Fili’s oldest friends at the farm where he makes his own ricotta cheese helped make the tour experience more personal. Said Davis, “Sicilia is their homeland, and being with them for the ride makes it feel like yours too.”

Because Newton, Connare, and Patterson have been traveling to Sicily for so long together, said Davis, going with the class feels like tagging along with a family. They crack jokes and remind each other of Sicilian trivia on long bus rides. In each town the teachers and Sicilian Team have favorite restaurants or sunrise observation spots that they return to each year, and they share these locations with the students. “That's what family is, making and treasuring these traditions,” Davis said. 

This sense of family is evident in student interactions, too; according to veterans Davis and Epstein, the bonding that occurs throughout the trip translates back to the classroom upon the students’ return.

“We know everyone's personalities and mesh well together,” said Davis. Used to being together, writers and photographers in the UMass class refused to work in separate rooms upon returning from Sicily, despite the fact that they are working on different final projects. UMass and Hartford students said they plan to visit one another, and have begun planning an exhibition of all the students’ work to be possibly shown at both schools in the fall.

Said Bates, “My expectations were to fall in love with just about everything, which happened, and to really devote myself to the experience, which also happened.” Concerns about traveling in a foreign country with UMass students he had never met before, Bates said, were quickly assuaged; “I felt instantly accepted, and grew to love them and value our friendships regardless of the relatively short amount of time we’d known each other.”

Spring Break in Kentucky

Eleanor Harte

Feature Paper

April 22, 2013

A small group of college students stands in a circle around a pile of lumber, fitting construction helmets on their heads and pulling on work gloves as they listen to a man holding a saw give instructions. A few of the students shiver as a cold wind rips through the group, but they continue to listen intently. As the man finishes talking, they break apart and begin to pick up tools: a drill, a hammer, a ladder. They get to work, and suddenly it’s hard to hear anything over the roar of the saw and the sound of nails being hammered into wood.

The students were in eastern Kentucky, spending their spring break repairing homes and building new ones for families in need. A group of 15 UMass Amherst students in the Newman Students Association chose to go on the alternative spring break trip to Appalachia in March.

They worked with a nondenominational Christian organization, the Christian Appalachian Project, which provides physical, spiritual, and emotional support to people in need living in Appalachia. They participated in Workfest 2013, which allows CAP to finish projects on a much quicker schedule than they would be able to do with their regular long-term volunteers.

NSA traditionally does a service trip over spring break, but planning this one proved to be exceptionally tricky. In fact, it almost didn’t happen. Emily Crain, a junior psychology and women’s gender and sexuality studies major, is the president of NSA and had the responsibility of planning the trip, but found herself without much help.

“We had talked about the trip in the fall, but no one really did anything about it. The responsibility was left to me,” said Crain. “In early February I walked into the room with all the priests and told them we didn’t have time to pull it off so we couldn’t do it. And they said, ‘No, we’re doing it,’” said Crain. “They said, ‘You need to start fundraising now or you’re not going to have enough money.’ So I started immediately, and I was just planning fundraisers and hoping people would come.”

Her efforts were a success, and the students only ended up having to pay $50 each for the trip. “Everything is about knowing people,” she said, explaining how she managed to get the vans for a cheap price. The students appreciated her efforts, especially as Crain had prior vacation plans and wasn’t even able to go on the trip.

Lindsey Russo, a junior public health science major, said she was inspired to participate in alternative spring break because of her history with community service. “I went on a trip to Neon, Ky. in high school and I really liked it,” Russo said enthusiastically. “It was the best experience I had in high school. I went to Catholic school and I felt it was the best way to live out my faith in action. Alternative spring break has allowed me to discover the true meaning of Christ in my daily life, doing what he would have done for others.”

Russo’s team built a porch and added a bedroom onto a house for a man awaiting a heart transplant, braving a thunderstorm one afternoon to continue the work. “Working in tough conditions showed me how much we rely on God and each other. Material things start to lose their value,” she said.

Students worked in teams with students from other schools, building porches, additions to houses, and repairing roofs. Mireille O’Connor, a sophomore journalism major, was on a team that added siding and outside insulation to the home of an older couple who had built their home over 30 years ago, but now found themselves with a leaky roof and a home that was cold in the winter.

“The family’s reactions were really touching. The couple’s children and grandchildren were so thankful that we were helping them,” O’Connor said, smiling as she described the family, who she grew to really care for over the week.

“One of the best parts was when the family hugged us and how they really cared for us. They cooked us chili hot dogs and vegetable pizza, macaroni salad, even butterscotch cake and cupcakes,” O’Connor said. “They were so nice. I didn’t want to leave them. I wish we could be there to see the end of the project.”

The project should be finished in the next few months. Even though she won’t be there to help finish the project in person, O’Connor is thankful she got the chance to work on it. “The other type of volunteer work I usually do is fundraising for things, and I never really get to see what the hard work is going toward.”

Alec Bergweiler, a junior mechanical engineering major, went on the trip because his friend had a good experience on a similar trip with the NSA last year. “I wanted something else to do for spring break other than sitting at home doing homework,” said Bergweiler.

He worked on the home of an older couple plagued with medical problems – first, the husband had three heart attacks, and then the wife was diagnosed with leukemia. “She’s in remission now, but their medical bills were really high,” said Bergweiler, explaining the events which caused the couple to spend the money they planned to use for home repairs on medical treatment. CAP stepped in to help the family with the repairs.

O’Connor called the trip her best UMass memory. “I think learning to work together with all different types of people throughout the trip and getting to know them while helping the family at the same time was the best part.” The diversity of the volunteers was an aspect she appreciated as well. “It was really cool how all the helpers came from different walks of life – different majors, hometowns, backgrounds – but had the same common goal of wanting to help the family and really worked together to achieve that.”

Bergweiler did things in Kentucky that he had never done before. “I got up on the roof, knocked down a chimney with crowbars, added siding to the house, and put a metal roof over the existing shingle roof.”

Seeing eastern Kentucky was also a highlight for Bergweiler. “We went to the original KFC restaurant, and Cumberland Falls, which was cool because I don’t see waterfalls very often.” Cumberland Falls is known as the “Niagara of the South,” and is located close to the camp where the group stayed.

“My favorite part was how friendly the people we were helping were. They were very down to earth, and getting to know them was nice. The husband talked to me about how he was a firefighter and flew planes – he had a really full and interesting life.” Students often talked to the homeowners while working and on lunch breaks. They shared stories of faith and life at college and learned about life in Kentucky.

Bergweiler says he would definitely go on a similar trip again. “We improved the homeowners’ lives through direct impact, which was great.”

Lynn Pham, a junior psychology major, found out about the trip through a friend. “It was a great bonding experience. I made a lot of new friends from UMass, who I never would have met otherwise. One of my favorite parts was playing games, like Taboo, a group word game, kind of like charades where people shout things out – it was a lot of fun.”

Pham has participated in a number of service projects before, but none made as big of an impact on her as Workfest 2013. “I’ve done food pantries, given donations, and worked at nursing homes. But I wanted to see my actual volunteer time being given to needy people as well as see the impact that I was making.”

Police Visit Response

Emily Bedenkop

March 12, 2013

An expectation of privacy is key in determining what is acceptable, said Amherst Police Department Detective Jamie Reardon during his talk Monday with Mary Carey’s Journalism 300 class. Reardon, who spoke with students at the Amherst Police Department, explained his police interactions with the press and how it is to work in area with a high concentration of college students.

In public places there can be no expectation or enforcement of privacy, Reardon said when asked him about cell phone cameras. Videotaping arrests is a frequent occurrence, and is completely legal as long as the person with the camera is a safe distance away from the scene and not interfering. “I expect to get videotaped,” said Reardon.

Videotapes can also be used as either direct evidence or background information for an investigation; “It’s one of the best sources of information that we have. There’s no expectation of privacy, and it’s free,” said Reardon of the APD’s reliance on social media, particularly videos posted to YouTube and photos on Facebook.

When asked about “Blarney Blowout,” the St. Patrick’s Day-themed party that took place Saturday at the Amherst Townhouses, Reardon spoke about the ways the APD attempts to prepare for similar events that are sure to require police presence. Extra staffing, coordination with colleges and landlords in the area, and working with state and university police forces are all tactics employed by the APD. Additionally, officers often speak with house owners before large parties occur to warn them of potential consequences.

Preparation efforts and even the calls that bring police to a scene can never be complete, however. Even with his 13 years of experience at the APD, Reardon said: “We never know what we’re getting into, it’s never perfect.”

An expectation of privacy extends to the information released by the APD to members of the press. Once a suspect is arraigned in court, their arrest is public information and can be released and published as such.

Victim information is a different story, though, said Reardon, citing concerns about victim safety, the possibility of retaliation, and prejudicing a jury. Releasing information about warrants is also unusual, as it could affect an investigation or potentially lead to the harming of informants.

“I’ll give you what I can, but I can’t give you everything,” Reardon said with regard to what information is released by the APD. 

Press meetings every weekday allow for a controlled release of information by the APD that is accurate, not in violation of privacy laws, and released for legitimate reasons like asking the community to aid in an identification, said Reardon.

Ultimately, said Reardon, much of his decisions come down to a mixture of common sense the over 80 APD policies. Questioning the students about how they would react in certain situations, as well as by answering their questions, helped students to get a better grasp of Reardon’s role and responsibilities in the APD.