Sleep: Most of us love it, all of us need it. The average adult needs seven to nine hours of sleep a day, but almost 50 percent of them fail to meet it. In college, almost 70 percent of students fail to meet this same requirement.

The infamous “college triangle” is an accurate representation of why so many college students are sleep deprived. The three sides to it are “good grades,” “social life” and “enough sleep.” You can only pick two and, understandably, the majority of college students choose the first two over the latter.

I personally try my best to hit all three sides of the triangle, but like I’ll discuss throughout the remainder of this article, being a college student can make that very difficult. If you try too hard to be on one side of the triangle, the others can seem out of reach. Lets start with sleep.

A small amount of sleep deprivation every day can add up to have big consequences. In college, this could impact memory, performance and subsequently GPA. So many students claim that they “don’t need sleep,” but this is completely inaccurate and the deprivation just takes more time to creep up on them.

While it’s proven that how much sleep an individual can function on is hereditary, the amount of sleep that a person needs is still the same in the long-run for each individual. Eventually, one will need to sleep longer to compensate for that lost sleep.

Another potential reason a student could suffer from sleep deprivation is lack of time management. If you are a “procrastinator” (yes, I’m talking to you) you are at an even higher risk of not getting the proper amount of sleep needed. Students who don’t have a study schedule tend to leave certain things until the day they’re due, which can have a negative effect on their sleep habits and their GPA.

Imagine you have a small assignment due at 8 a.m. on Wednesday and you start it at 11 p.m. the night before. You will probably be able to finish it in an hour or two without much of a problem.

Now, imagine you have a paper due at 8 a.m. on Wednesday and you start it at 11 p.m. the night before. This time you’ve set yourself up for failure. You’ll most likely be forced to produce some mediocre work and lose out on a lot of sleep which will be essential to focusing and retaining information in your classes the next day.

Instead of progressively working on the paper when it was assigned, you have created a slippery slope that will now affect your ability to stay awake and learn in your other classes.

Building a schedule is the single most important thing you can do in order to make sure you stay on top of your assignments and sleep schedule while at college. There’s a reason you have so much free time in college. When you plot out your classes on a schedule, you’ll see that you actually have quite a lot more free time than you ever imagined.

So next time you’re pulling that all-nighter the night before your 8 a.m. class, consider cutting your losses and getting a few hours of shuteye. Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to pick all 3 sides of the “college triangle” if you play your cards right!