Roommates who snore... and 14 other reasons students don't get enough sleep

In May, the website Smashing Lists featured the "Top 10 Sleepiest Mammals Around the Globe." The list includes the Southern owl monkey, the nine-banded armadillo, the little brown bat, and the three-toed sloth.

It does not include the modern college student.

For many students though, sleep is the most precious commodity of their college years, except for possibly alcohol and easy classes.

And yet, as the alarm sounds on the start of another fall semester, it will remain scarce.

As a column in The Daily Illini at the University of Illinois confirms, "With the beginning of a new semester and a new class schedule, students will be getting syllabi, textbooks, and stacks of notebooks.  One thing students won’t be getting a lot of: sleep."

The College Heights Herald at Western Kentucky University similarly states, "There are three things that all college students can agree they need more of: time, money, and sleep.  Unfortunately, time can’t be created and money doesn’t grow on trees.  Sleep, however, greatly impacts the college experience, especially if students aren’t getting enough of it."

What keeps students from grabbing enough shuteye during the academic year?  Here is a top 15 list of confirmed student sleep disrupters-- some serious and some tongue-in-cheek.

1. Roommates who snore, scream into their phone, sexile you with abandon, watch TV until dawn, and simply wont...shut...up.

2. Energy drinks crying out for attention in the mini-fridge only two feet away.

3. Tests, presentations, essays, assignments, and the stress and Adderall that accompany them.

4. Diagnosed insomnia and other sleep disorders.  Two of the more traumatic: nocturia ("a frequent need to get up and go to the bathroom to urinate at night") and night terrors ("a sleep disruption that seems similar to a nightmare, but with a far more dramatic presentation").

5. Depression, anxiety, homesickness, and lost stuffed animals.

6. A poor diet and lack of exercise.

7. Social media chatter, MMORPGs, illegal downloading, live streaming, and sleep texting.  As I previously wrote about the latter, a growing number of students are slipping into bed with their mobile phones and other digital gadgets and gizmos by their side-- even as they constantly ring, vibrate, and light up with messages, gossip, and stay-awake temptation.

The Chronicle of Higher Education also reported, "Many people, especially young adults, feel a sense of attachment to their phones and view the devices as a social lifeline that they can’t do without, even when the anxiety the phones produce keeps them up at night."

8. Late-night residence hall fire alarm evacuations, blackouts, and water leaks.  Related dorm annoyances: the constant smell of Pop-Tarts, the squeak of shower shoes down the hall, nearby elevator door pings, and the piercingly bright light emanating from the streetlamp just outside your room or suite window.

9. A class schedule without any morning start times, providing no incentive to go to bed at a decent time throughout the week.

10. A nightlife heavy on partying, drinking, hazing, rushing, road trips, McDonald's fries, and 30-hour dance marathons.

11. Attempting to sleep next to a best friend or significant other in a twin bed.

12. A long-distance relationship with a time difference or a three-hour nightly Skype requirement.

13. Internships, side jobs, endless campus activities, and related worries about résumé-building and earning smidgens of extra cash.

14. Power naps that stretch from lunch to dinner.

15. Final exams.

What do you think?  What else stops students from sleeping deeply or long enough each night while in school?  And what is your secret to better or lengthier shuteye?

Dan Reimold, Ph.D., is a college journalism scholar who has written and presented about the student press throughout the U.S. and in Southeast Asia. He is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Tampa, where he also advises The Minaret student newspaper. He maintains the student journalism industry blog College Media Matters. A complete list of Campus Beat articles is here.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.