If I had an hour of sleep for each time someone told me that I need at least eight hours of sleep each night, I would be asleep so much that they wouldn’t even need to tell me that.

I know that enough sleep is ideal.  But it’s just that: ideal. 

In a perfect world, we college students would get the sleep we need. 

I don’t live in a perfect world. 

I live in the real world of college. It’s not what television and movies tell you it is with their depictions of wild parties every night and easy classes that apparently don’t take attendance.

For those who would like to pass our classes with the hope to eventually walk away with a degree in hand, college means actually going to class, studying for exams, completing assignments, living in the library and sometimes staying up all night.

Staying up all night isn’t what any college student prefers, but there are nights when it’s necessary.

And when the going gets tough, the sleep-deprived look to their loyal friend: caffeine. 

Yes, I know that too much caffeine is bad for me. 

But a grade of F on that exam or that paper is also bad for my GPA and me.

Though some joke that you have to pick between good grades, a social life and enough sleep, it’s a serious struggle for most college students.

The powers that be tell us you have to be well-rounded college graduates to land a decent career that will help you pay off that staggering amount of student loans.

This means maintaining good grades while involved in multiple extracurricular activities in which you must hold leadership positions.  If you add a part- or full-time job and a social life to that, there’s just not much room left over for hours and hours of sleep.

It’s no easy task keeping your GPA above current gas prices (though if they keep getting cheaper, it might be).

With this considered, don’t judge me or my fellow sleep-deprived comrades for picking up an energy drink or two from the SUB or Starbucks coffee with additional espresso shots. 

As long as a student who consumes caffeine does not exceed a certain limit, he or she will survive and might just pass that dreaded chemistry exam.

The lack of sleep and the excess of caffeine are entirely worth it if it results in an A on that test, paper or presentation.

It’s not that I’m an alien or robot that doesn’t like or require sleep, but I’m willing to give it up or to get less of it if it means academic success. 

I have numerous commitments with school, work and social activities, and I refuse to give less than my all to them.

Students usually want to sleep or go out with friends, but that is not always possible if they want to succeed academically.

Forget that one party Friday night, or you might find yourself with the unfortunate dilemma of dropping a class toward the end of semester that you could have passed if you had put in a little more effort.

Go to sleep a few hours later one night. Wake up early one day and get ahead on your assignments. Work on that paper before the night before it’s due.  Your GPA will thank you for it.

I will put the book down and go to bed once it’s summer or once I’ve graduated. Though some need sleep to retain the material they’ve studied, not all of us do. 

Some students simply do better if they cram the night before a test or if they’re completing an assignment with a quickly approaching deadline.

Before you say it’s all procrastination, consider that some students just have a demanding course load and multiple other commitments.

They’re doing the best they can to get it all done on time.

You can call me a nerd for saying this, but sleep doesn’t always factor into the equation.

Lucky for the sleep-deprived students passing their classes, sleep is easier to recover than your GPA.

Religion can be spoken about freely, yet we tread softly when publically mentioning it.

But, the hardest idea to grasp is that having the right to spread religious awareness is certainly not the same as pushing beliefs on others.

While people reserve the right to practice religious freedom and to speak without restraint about any faith they choose, forcing others to listen isn’t freedom of speech; it’s harassment. 

There are over 127 major religions and seven billion people on earth with seven billion different views of God. Some love Him, some fear Him, some question His existence and some are still searching for Him.

Some will decide that God plays no role in the trials and tribulations of life, while others will find faith the moment they see their newborn child take the first breath of being.

Whether we discover where we spiritually belong in a pew on Sunday morning or on a lonely drive with no destination, the journey to finding or forgetting God is what determines our views. We can’t be told what and who to believe in, or to even believe in anything at all.

What we learn, who we meet and the challenges we face are what we remember when we stand before Him, not the church members that knock on our front doors, or the people that stand in the quad condemning us all to hell.

And if the church goer at your front door changes your perspective, let them. Be baptized in one church, change your mind, and be baptized in another. Let what you learned in biology class make you question evolution and the powers above.

Learning from life experiences and questioning God’s ways isn’t sin; it’s human. It’s human to change emotionally, mentally, and spiritually when physical surroundings change. It’s human to simply be curious and indecisive.

Faith only exists because there are people that believe strongly enough in it to make it a reality and a way of life. Without doubters and differences, the strength of religion would never have anything to be measured against.

Because of that, religion without true belief is weak.

Never practice out of habit, don’t follow just because your parents or friends do, and don’t ever think one religion is superior to another. In a time that seems to have the explanation for everything in a test tube or on a database, people believing in any God at all is a miracle in itself.