Poll: Almost half of Ryerson students suffer from lack of sleep

New poll suggests less than half of Ryerson students get the recommended amount of sleep

Almost half of Ryerson students say lack of sleep impacts their schoolwork, a new poll suggests.

The survey, conducted by the Ryerson School of Journalism, found that 47.4 per cent of students say sleep deprivation affects their productivity at school. Of the students polled 15 per cent said it “always” has an impact while the remaining 32 per cent said it “often” does.

“I think for me it’s been harder to absorb things that I learn in class,” first-year Ryerson student Michelle Nam said. “The less sleep I have, I find it harder to pay attention in class or to really just pay attention to the prof.”

Nam said she normally gets about three to four hours of sleep a night. That’s much less than the seven to nine hours of sleep the National Sleep Foundation recommends for people between the ages of 18 and 25.

“I tend to forget lots of the things I’ve done and written and the things I need to do,” Nam said. “Then I realize it and I think, ‘Oh crap I need to do this,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh crap and I have this to do,’ and so everything just kind of falls back on itself.”

In high school, Nam got six or seven hours of sleep. However, she said the stress of her assignments is making that difficult.

Commuting playing part in some student's lack of sleep

Another Ryerson student blames her travel time.

“The first couple weeks of school I was really tired because with 8 a.m. classes I would have to wake up at 4:30 to get a bus to get a train and then to walk,” said Olivia Mingram, who lives in Oshawa. “So it was really hard adjusting.”

According to Statistics Canada, the average commuter who travels more than an hour every day gets seven hours and 41 minutes of sleep. At Ryerson, 36 per cent of students take over 40 minutes to get to school. However, only 15.6 per cent of those surveyed at Ryerson get at least eight hours of shut-eye.

“I’m really tired and have trouble listening and paying attention and figuring out what to write in my notes,” Mingram said. “I procrastinated on an essay once and I spent the entire night before writing it, until about three in the morning. I got about two hours of sleep, it was just… it was rough.”

Roua Alkadi said her lack of sleep caught her by surprise.

“I’m a first-year student, so first semester was like new for me. I didn’t know how to manage, I wasn’t used to it,” she said.

Managing time to get more sleep

Alkadi said she made some changes.

“Now I am more capable of managing my time but I’m still not getting enough sleep to be honest. This semester I’m getting five hours of sleep,” Alkadi said. “Last semester I was getting three or two [hours], it was crazy I know.”

The survey of 897 undergraduate students was a randomized poll, conducted person-to-person, between March 3 and 7, 2017. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. It was based on both full-time and part-time undergraduate students at Ryerson University during the 2016 to 2017 academic year.