PARKVILLE, 26 March. Behavourial scientists have recently become aware of the phenomenon of university circadian rhythms and their unique effect on students' biological clocks. Australian behavourial science research team Y Is It So has released a report on the subject which reveals that during the universtiy season, sutdents become accustomed to study (or 'work') for just 7 months of the year, with 5 months of free time. The report suggests that this handicaps students for life after they graduate, because university circadian rhythms are vastly different from those in the real world. "Students are ill-prepared by university for the average 11 months of work required in the workforce, for example," explained Dr. Coatworthy, a member for the Y-team.
The report also details other biological changes in students, such as dramatically altered sleeping and eating habits. This has been attributed to the extreme increase in exposure to light that students must undergo while studying, such as lots of tmie spent in brightly lit lecture theatres and libraries. The biological clock of students learn to function on less sleep than during the non-university season. There is also a marked increase in appetite during the university attendance season, especially for caffeine and sugary, processed snack foods.
Additional studies suggest that the university circadian rhythms can vary according to the course each student takes. For example, students undetaking an Arts degree become accustomed to not waking before 10:00 am, and not at all on Fridays. Engineering students, however, have been seen to develop a rhythm of early mornings and late nights which increases in severity around examination period (!!) Some evidence has been found that students undertaking a particularly complex double degree such as Science/Engineering become 'programmed' by their biological clocks to function on as little as half as much sleep as those in single degrees, and remain in a constant state of near-collapse.
This a major biological breakthrough, but further research is hampered by the extreme shortness of the university season. Universities with longer attendance seasons are now being considered as research candidates, making it unlikely that any more studies will be conducted in Australian universities.
No im not gonna cite anything
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment