Students sacrifice sleep in order to finish their assignments on time, study for their tests, achieve good grades and have future career success.
Hustle culture emphasizes the idea that sacrificing sleep and self-care are required to succeed.
Danny Moriana, a biomedical engineering student at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), said sacrificing sleep is necessary to succeed, but it shouldn’t be the case.
“Especially during exam period, I like straight-up do not sleep for some nights,” he said. “I think that’s just the way it is, you just have to put in the time and hours.”
A report by the Public Health Agency of Canada said adults aged 18 to 64 are recommended to sleep seven to nine hours of sleep per night.
However, students like Moriana are going to sleep at two or three in the morning and are only getting four to five hours of sleep each night.
Akash Grewal, a medical student at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine in Hamilton, said he does not agree with hustle culture but that making small sacrifices is necessary.
“I feel like as long as you do other things, somewhere down the road that keep you on track. I think it’ll be fine,” he said. “Like, for example, I did sacrifice my sleep a lot of the time. But I made the effort to spend time with friends, I think that kind of countered the burnout.”
Grewal said even though he didn’t sleep as much as he should have, getting good grades gave him a sense of delayed gratification.
Making small sacrifices in order to achieve his big goals, like getting into medical school, was his motivation, he said.
Sleep directly impacts one’s mental health, according to a study done by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).
Having good sleeping habits can lessen the effects of depression and can improve “the psychological well-being and quality of life,” the CAMH study said.
Although the study emphasizes the importance of sleep to students, achieving career success and socializing with their friends is more important.
“Those hours of, you know, hanging out with friends and doing things that are not school are a sort of relief,” Moriana said.
Despite the idea that hustle culture has a negative effect on people’s mental health, students understand that many things take priority over sleep.
To mitigate the effects of the lack of rest and sleep students get, universities and colleges have created spaces for students to rest.
At Humber College, the student union, IGNITE, has reopened its sleep lounge after being closed for two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Creating a safe space for students to go and rest in between classes, or even before their commute home, is incredibly helpful and something that should be implemented at all schools.