Managing sleep as a pre-med

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How many hours a day of sleep do you usually get, on average?

  • I sleep only when absolutely necessary.

    Votes: 3 1.1%

  • 1-3

    Votes: 6 2.1%

  • 4-6

    Votes: 84 29.9%

  • 7-9

    Votes: 179 63.7%

  • 10+

    Votes: 9 3.2%
  • Total voters
    281
Dandine

Dandine

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I am sure someone has asked about sleeping schedules somewhere along the line, but I haven't been able to find any related posts, so I decided to start one.

I have been feeling more tired than usual, and I'm thinking that it has to do with my sleep schedule. I'm mainly worried that I will get to the point where I will feel so lethargic throughout the day due to sleep deprivation that I will not be able to function, and from experience, I can say that this has happened on occasion.

So, the questions: In terms of sleep, how many hours do you sleep in a day, on average, and how do you manage it along with your course load (especially if you have a heavy one for the semester)? Do you use a "sleep schedule" (e.g. take periodic naps throughout the day, only sleep at night, etc.)? Also, when do you usually get your work done (mornings, afternoons, evenings, dispersed throughout day)?

😴
 
Unless you have extraneous circumstances, I find it very hard to believe that, as an undergrad, you don't have time to get around 7-8hrs of sleep a night. I think horrible time management rather than a heavy load is the reason for that. I personally don't sleep for 8hrs a night, but that is definitely by choice and not due to time constraints. I'm curious to hear the responses.
 
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No matter how busy I am, I almost always manage to get 7 hours/night. I never nap, I'm ALWAYS in bed by midnight (this is probably the most important aspect of my productivity) and I get most of my work done in the mornings. Finals week, I might slip to 5-6 hours/night, but even then, I think that sleep is more important than getting a few extra hours of studying.
 
prado said:
Unless you have extraneous circumstances, I find it very hard to believe that, as an undergrad, you don't have time to sleep at least 8 hours a night. I think horrible time management rather than heavy load is the reason for that. I personally don't sleep for 8hrs a night, but that is definitely by choice and due to time constraints. I'm curious to hear the responses.
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My thoughts exactly. Undergrad really isn't that much work.
 
No one averages 1-3 hours of sleep as a premed. Even during finals.
 
Unless you have some really extenuating circumstances (eg. have a family, have a full-time job, etc), you should be getting enough sleep each night as a pre-med. If you're not, chances are that you may not be studying effectively (ex: cramming right before major exams, and thus, not getting enough sleep), you have way too much on your plate, or you are not allocating your time correctly.

On occasion, I will take a nap during the day. Usually less than one hour. I get most of my work done before night time, and I don't study after 10pm-11pm. After about 11, nothing really sticks for me.

Try drinking tea before going to sleep, using a white noise app, not watching TV before bed, or some of the basic methods you can find online for how to get more sleep. If you really feel you aren't getting enough sleep, it sounds like it's something you have to make a priority.
 
I work on a weird work schedule from 5am-3pm in order to squeeze in a 24hr day the things I want to be able to do (work out, spend time with the fiance, volunteer, shadow, play games, watch sports, cook food...etc), which means having a pretty strange sleep schedule M-F (I try to sleep around 10:30, 11ish, and wake up around 4am). I also have a half hour commute to and from work--so I usually get around 5ish hours of sleep a night. I find ways to cope via coffee, short naps, etc. On weekends I sleep in though, probably ending up with close to 8 hours.

My schedule's a bit extreme, but I always tell myself I'm training up for med school 😀
 
If anything, I feel that the amount of sleep that I get is less important than having a consistent sleep schedule. If I go to bed around the same time every night, then I feel more rested with six hours than if I sporadically stay up much later and get eight hours.
 
prado said:
Unless you have extraneous circumstances, I find it very hard to believe that, as an undergrad, you don't have time to get around 7-8hrs of sleep a night. I think horrible time management rather than a heavy load is the reason for that. I personally don't sleep for 8hrs a night, but that is definitely by choice and not due to time constraints. I'm curious to hear the responses.
Click to expand...

This was definitely the case for me. I averaged 5-6 hours of sleep a night on week days during undergrad, mainly because of procrastination. I was pretty much constantly tired and consequently consumed entirely too much caffeine. As I got older I learned to manage my time more efficiently and forced myself to get at least 7 hours of sleep each night.

As you get older you won't need to sleep as much though. I can function normally off of 6 hours of sleep and a small cup of coffee now. That wouldn't have worked for me as an undergrad.
 
Everyone has already basically said it, but yeah, there's really no reason you can't get at least 7-9 hours a night during undergraduate years I don't think with good time management. While I'm only a freshman and haven't taken orgo or upper level classes yet, I've not had a lot of work yet at all and have been able to get ample sleep if I desire. The only thing that keeps me from getting enough sleep is having 8 AMs 4 days a week, having to get up at 7:20 and just being incapable of falling asleep until about midnight or a little earlier each night.

If you honestly cannot get enough sleep even with good time management, then I imagine it's just because you require more time to study, which is perfectly fine. I'd respect a person more for trying harder and getting the same grades as a person that doesn't have to try as hard because it's naturally easier.
 
imcanadaian said:
I work on a weird work schedule from 5am-3pm in order to squeeze in a 24hr day the things I want to be able to do (work out, spend time with the fiance, volunteer, shadow, play games, watch sports, cook food...etc), which means having a pretty strange sleep schedule M-F (I try to sleep around 10:30, 11ish, and wake up around 4am). I also have a half hour commute to and from work--so I usually get around 5ish hours of sleep a night. I find ways to cope via coffee, short naps, etc. On weekends I sleep in though, probably ending up with close to 8 hours.

My schedule's a bit extreme, but I always tell myself I'm training up for med school 😀
Click to expand...

Attaboy! Hard work's where it's at.
 
5 hours per night, 6 on a good night, very low variability. I suck at sleeping and so does my infant child. I do take a good power nap most days though.
 
Average day with an infant and a toddler, hour commute each way to work meaning waking at 6 am, class at 5:30/6pm ish after work, home at 9:30, dinner, family time, study, I usually get to sleep by 2 a.m. On a good day I get 5 hours, while waking periodically to feed the little one.

But of course my situation is far from the norm, as many have already said!
 
WhittyPsyche said:
Average day with an infant and a toddler, hour commute each way to work meaning waking at 6 am, class at 5:30/6pm ish after work, home at 9:30, dinner, family time, study, I usually get to sleep by 2 a.m. On a good day I get 5 hours, while waking periodically to feed the little one.

But of course my situation is far from the norm, as many have already said!
Click to expand...

👍😀 I didn't feel like elaborating, but you kinda hit the nail on the head.
 
Lysilegluleu said:
👍😀 I didn't feel like elaborating, but you kinda hit the nail on the head.
Click to expand...
Yeah I think it was a tiny bit of venting. My daughter has been on a reverse schedule the past three days because of sleeping all day with her caregiver... meaning 3 hours every night this week, and I don't drink any caffeine so I am running on E. (No idea how I have survived so far lol)
 
WhittyPsyche said:
Yeah I think it was a tiny bit of venting. My daughter has been on a reverse schedule the past three days because of sleeping all day with her caregiver... meaning 3 hours every night this week, and I don't drink any caffeine so I am running on E. (No idea how I have survived so far lol)
Click to expand...

You might want to reconsider the bolded part 🙂
 
EnergyDrink said:
No one averages 1-3 hours of sleep as a premed. Even during finals.
Click to expand...

I agree with everyone else here. If you're averaging less than 4-5 hours of sleep a night, the problem is you, not your workload.

Here's what I get a night, on average:
Deployed (boots on the ground): 3, 4 if a quiet night (very rare in the places people like me get stuck at)
On a ship: 5-6
Stateside: 5-7
On leave: 6-7
 
Lol yeah I have tried recently, but after going my whole life without I cannot actually consume it without jitters from and stomach aches just from a half cup of flavored coffee. Plus it would significantly undermine my regimen as a runner.
 
I usually get 7-8 hours now that I'm in graduate school. I feel like I probably got 5-6 hours most nights in undergrad, especially towards the beginning. Over the years, I guess I've just gotten much more efficient at planning studying and free time.
 
Are you a premed? Do you feel like you need sleep? Then go to sleep, being a pre-med isn't really that difficult....
 
Dandine said:
I am sure someone has asked about sleeping schedules somewhere along the line, but I haven't been able to find any related posts, so I decided to start one.

I have been feeling more tired than usual, and I'm thinking that it has to do with my sleep schedule. I'm mainly worried that I will get to the point where I will feel so lethargic throughout the day due to sleep deprivation that I will not be able to function, and from experience, I can say that this has happened on occasion.

So, the questions: In terms of sleep, how many hours do you sleep in a day, on average, and how do you manage it along with your course load (especially if you have a heavy one for the semester)? Do you use a "sleep schedule" (e.g. take periodic naps throughout the day, only sleep at night, etc.)? Also, when do you usually get your work done (mornings, afternoons, evenings, dispersed throughout day)?

😴
Click to expand...

i slept 0 hours and 12 hours. there were no inbetweens.
 
Just woke up, what did I miss here? OP, looks like you need more sleep.
 
5-6 during the week maybe. Sometimes not at all if I procrastinated well enough. Oh well, have some caffeine and deal.
 
Home from work at midnight, actually go to sleep during 1 or 2 o'clock hour, baby diaper change sometime usually during 3 o'clock hour, feed baby at 6 am, get ready and leave house for school at 7:30 am, school until about 1:30 p.m., work at 3:30p.m., home at midnight, and...repeat.

Maybe catch up on sleep during weekend mornings. Usually catching up on studying.

5-6 hours more often than not, but 3-4 is not uncommon (including afternoon nap and the occasional sleep-in til 7 am if my wife wakes up before me).

My life, atm, can't really be helped. For most people, maybe, but not me.

Doubt it? Try it.
 
In undergrad unless you have odd circumstances (such as a baby, or weird work hours) there really is no excuse to be sleeping so little.

Its just all about time management, and I use to be the guy who pulled frequent all nighters. I can admit its because I didn't spend my time wisely.

You even have to spend your sleep time wisely, as in don't dilly on the computer in bed for an hour or stay up watching TV. Turn it all off and go to sleep. I read before bed as it helps me wind down.
 
You're doing it way wrong if you're not able to get at least 7 hours of sleep and 2-3 hours of you time ( not counting dinner) every single day.
 
Lysilegluleu said:
Open for suggestions.
Click to expand...

If it isn't obvious already, I don't think anyone is referring to you in particular. And if you've read the thread, everyone's comments exclude those that have kids/family and an erratic, out of bfe commitment.

There's almost no reason your average premed should not be able to sleep at least 7 hours per night.
 
Lysilegluleu said:
Home from work at midnight, actually go to sleep during 1 or 2 o'clock hour, baby diaper change sometime usually during 3 o'clock hour, feed baby at 6 am, get ready and leave house for school at 7:30 am, school until about 1:30 p.m., work at 3:30p.m., home at midnight, and...repeat.

Maybe catch up on sleep during weekend mornings. Usually catching up on studying.

5-6 hours more often than not, but 3-4 is not uncommon (including afternoon nap and the occasional sleep-in til 7 am if my wife wakes up before me).

My life, atm, can't really be helped. For most people, maybe, but not me.

Doubt it? Try it.
Click to expand...
haha yeah I'm actually working a reduced schedule now, around 46.5 hours/week at work up until 3 months ago it was 58 hours/week for over a year. I was dead.
 
On a side note, has anybody had luck with polyphasic sleep schedules? Sorry if I've butchered the term.
 
Lysilegluleu said:
On a side note, has anybody had luck with polyphasic sleep schedules? Sorry if I've butchered the term.
Click to expand...

My brother was doing the Everyman sleep schedule for a semester. He basically said that he was functional, but pretty much always irritable. Neither of us sleep for more than 5-6 hours by default and he was averaging 3 hours total a day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep
 
First of all, thank you for those who responded to the poll. I honestly did not expect the results that I received, and it definitely gives me something to think about! 🙂

Second, I do think that time management is a primary factor in this whole equation. Does anyone by any chance know any useful time management feeds? I'll be searching for a few myself.
 
I work best at night time after an evening nap. And this makes me work all the way til 2-3 AM sometimes. And I have morning classes. So my schedule is sort of messed up, and depends on the naps.
 
I had a polyphasic schedule a couple of years ago. For some reason I couldn't sleep more than 4 hours at a time, so this made me take advantage of every waking time doing home work, because I didn't knew when I'd be able to fall asleep. Not my most fun semester.

My schedule now is waking at 7:00am, either going to 8:00am class on T and R or doing homework before 9:30am class on MWF. Then I take a short nap (an hour), then do more homework off and on until 8:00 or 9:00pm and going to bed at 11:00pm. This schedule works for me (since I can sleep regularly again!)
 
Sleep is my top priority. 7.5 hours per night - at some point I had a schedule where I slept for 6 hours at night and 1.5 in the afternoon, which worked totally fine as well. My optimal sleep schedule is whatever lets me wake up in the morning before my alarm and feel totally rested 🙂 On weekends I'll stay up a bit later and wake up a bit later, but in hours it's about the same.

I get most of my work done at night, which is probably an artifact of my previous schedule where I was in class every morning and in lab during the afternoon...now even though I'm not in lab, I'm used to not working until after dinner, so I end up wasting quite a lot of time in the afternoons.
 
Sleep deprivation can do some nasty stuff to your long term health, and few people actually can't stand to sacrifice an extra hour or two for good sleep. When I realized how much time I wasted during a day, I stopped pulling all-nighters and restricting my sleep. There are just so many other places to cut out waste, and sleep certainly isn't waste. It feels good to have changed.
 
6-7.5 hours at night with a 1.5 hour nap (but no longer) as needed works for me. Whatever doesn't get finished by bedtime will have to wait until morning.
 
I work 30+ hours a week, and I'm taking OChem and Physics. I typically get ~6 hours of sleep a night, sometimes 5 but sometimes 7-8. I don't think I'm doing anything wrong, I think that I'm just busy. I'd rather sacrifice a bit of sleep here and there to pull an A than sleep more and let my grades slip even a little. However, I'm almost always completely exhausted, so I don't know if that's the best thing for my longterm health.

I wish I slept more, but I think I'm doing fine. I really am not sure if it takes me more effort to do well in school than other people. It's possible, I guess. But I think having 3 jobs (one 20-30 hours a week, one 5-10 hours a week, one 2 hours a week) definitely cuts into my available time, so maybe my lack of sleep is understandable?

I almost never have "me time", either... I didn't know that daily free time was normal 🙁
 
sunflower18 said:
I work 30+ hours a week, and I'm taking OChem and Physics. I typically get ~6 hours of sleep a night, sometimes 5 but sometimes 7-8. I don't think I'm doing anything wrong, I think that I'm just busy. I'd rather sacrifice a bit of sleep here and there to pull an A than sleep more and let my grades slip even a little. However, I'm almost always completely exhausted, so I don't know if that's the best thing for my longterm health.

I wish I slept more, but I think I'm doing fine. I really am not sure if it takes me more effort to do well in school than other people. It's possible, I guess. But I think having 3 jobs (one 20-30 hours a week, one 5-10 hours a week, one 2 hours a week) definitely cuts into my available time, so maybe my lack of sleep is understandable?

I almost never have "me time", either... I didn't know that daily free time was normal 🙁
Click to expand...

I'm in the same boat; I work 3 jobs, totaling about 35 hrs a week (some overnight shifts), and have a pretty similar so I get the challenge. I've been able to ensure that I get enough sleep and am well-rested and healthy by "letting go" on some of my perfectionist tendencies. I try to gauge classes very thoroughly at the beginning of a semester to see how much work I need to do to get an A/do well/whatever, and thats what I do, and no more or no less. I know this sounds like I'm skimping, but honestly when you're juggling multiple thing at once, you'll sometimes need to cut corners here and there to keep everything afloat without burning out.
 
4-6 on weekdays, but around 12 on weekends 🙂
 
With 19-20 hour course load, research, EC's, and hanging with friends, I get 4-6 hours per night because I like to play games while doing HW.

If I actually wanted to, fitting in 9.25 hours per night would be easy. If you're an average undergrad without any extreme circumstances, getting enough sleep per night should be easy if you really want it.
 
Working nights 42 hrs a week on weekends and taking 11 hrs. Just a really screwed up sleep schedule and every other monday I work sunday night (7p-7a) get off monday morning and have class till 1. The + is I am an icu nurse and on good nights I can have a lot of downtime with my own desk by my patients = cumulative 2-3 hrs of studying.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2
 
Srs though as a pre-med you could sleep 8 hours a night if you planned well. You would have to sacrifice other activities though. Personally, I have always been happier to hit the gym and play IM sports and sleep 5-6 hours than skip those things and sleep more. What is important to you is the determining factor.
 
FCMike11 said:
Working nights 42 hrs a week on weekends and taking 11 hrs. Just a really screwed up sleep schedule and every other monday I work sunday night (7p-7a) get off monday morning and have class till 1. The + is I am an icu nurse and on good nights I can have a lot of downtime with my own desk by my patients = cumulative 2-3 hrs of studying.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...

Lolz and an actual paycheck for your work.. Phleb doesn't pay too well where I work. 😕
 
plumhill said:
I'm in the same boat; I work 3 jobs, totaling about 35 hrs a week (some overnight shifts), and have a pretty similar so I get the challenge. I've been able to ensure that I get enough sleep and am well-rested and healthy by "letting go" on some of my perfectionist tendencies. I try to gauge classes very thoroughly at the beginning of a semester to see how much work I need to do to get an A/do well/whatever, and thats what I do, and no more or no less. I know this sounds like I'm skimping, but honestly when you're juggling multiple thing at once, you'll sometimes need to cut corners here and there to keep everything afloat without burning out.
Click to expand...

Ohh yeah I haven't done that yet. I'm still a total perfectionist and do more than I probably need to. I wouldn't be happy otherwise I don't think. I would waste the time I should be sleeping just lying in bed and stressing about all the stuff I should be doing, hahah.
 
I think how much you need to sleep depends on the person.. I've found need approx. 8-9 hours, unfortunately. I'm a hungry, emotional wreck otherwise, lol.

In undergrad, I only got prob 6-7 because we had cross country/track practice at 6 am. I didn't think it was too little at the time, but looking back I don't know how I managed.

My grad school/post-bac was actually easier for me because I didn't have to balance competitive running & school, so I had the opportunity to sleep more, and it made a world of difference! I'm thankful I've never had to pull an all-nighter. I tried to once and fell asleep on my book at 2am.
 
I think I get on average 7-8 hours of sleep a night. My method (since I live in a pretty noisy area and I'm a super sensitive when falling asleep) is to never nap. I only take naps when absolutely necessary, but I find that the more tired I am when I'm going to sleep the deeper I sleep.

Also, find a routine and stick to it as closely as possible. I usually study for a couple of hours, watch one or two episodes (when I should be working) of something, take a shower, stretch, read a few chapters of a book (if its not past 11:30) and then hit the hay. I think sleep is mostly about prioritizing, know what is more or less important that a good nights rest and stick to those priorities.
 
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