It's nearly one o'clock on a freezing December morning, but the doors of Bizzell Memorial Library are seeing brisk traffic. The library offers a warm respite from the extreme temperature outside, and a quiet setting for students preparing for their final exams.

It's what the library doesn't have that is appealing to some of those students: no comfortable bed to tempt them to go to sleep.

Inside studying is James Dawson, who said he will be up all night. Dawson, sociology senior, asked what day it is before counting backward to calculate that he has already been awake for more than 36 hours.

Dawson said he prefers to take it easy during the semester and have a marathon study session before finals to catch up on all of his work.

"I won't study all semester, and before finals I'll study for three days straight without sleeping," Dawson said. "That's pretty much my strategy."

Bizzell employee Justin Watson said the library is open 24 hours a day during finals week for students like Dawson.

"We're pretty busy until about three in the morning the first few days of finals week," Watson said.

Sleep-deprived individuals are more likely to err, and sleeping may actually contribute to the learning process, according to two 2005 studies by researchers at Harvard University.

In the first study, hospital interns who were limited to working 80 hours a week with no more than 24 hours straight committed "significantly fewer patient medical errors" than interns who worked more hours.

In the second study, 12 college-age individuals were taught a sequence of finger movements. After a period of 12 hours, during which half of the group stayed awake and half of the group slept, the individuals were tested on their ability to recall the sequence. The half that had slept outperformed the non-sleepers. In a press release about the study, lead researcher Matthew Walker, Ph.D., said MRI scans showed that brain regions shifted dramatically during sleep.

"When you're asleep, it seems as though you are shifting memory to more efficient storage regions within the brain," Walker said. "Consequently, when you awaken, memory tasks can be performed both more quickly and accurately and with less stress and anxiety."

According to the National Sleep Foundation, being awake for 18 hours straight is equal to a blood alcohol concentration of .08 percent, a level at which a person is legally drunk. People suffering from sleep deprivation experience drowsiness, increased blood pressure and an inability to concentrate.

Nayroz Alshammat, University College junior, said that describes her after little sleep.

"I'm dead in the morning," she said.

Nevertheless, Alshammat said she will likely get five or six hours of sleep during finals week. She said she thinks she will probably do worse than she would if she got the eight hours of sleep she said she needs, but jokes that "coffee helps."

Jessica Castrejana, psychology sophomore, said she'll get four or five hours of sleep each night during finals week, much less than the 12 hours she prefers.

"I like my sleep," Castrejana said.

Jennifer Robert, Ph.D., a senior research associate at the Lynn Health Sciences Institute in Oklahoma City, said the amount of sleep a person needs depends on the individual, but studies have shown that people who gets less sleep than they need are putting their health at risk.

"You can't look at total sleep time and say someone who gets five hours is at risk for health problems, because some people are short sleepers and some people are long sleepers," Robert said. "But people getting less sleep than they need affects all kinds of hormonal systems."

Studies have shown that insomnia increases the risk of clinical depression, Robert said.

Jon Feierabend, electrical engineering junior, said he may get as little as three hours a night because of schoolwork, but says he catches up on sleep with afternoon naps.

However there is no such thing as catching up on sleep, Robert said.

"It doesn't quite work that way," she said. "Even though you may feel like you're catching up, you're not. Once you lose sleep, you cannot make it up."
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