Should Students Hold Office Hours?

I was recently up late working on a paper due the next morning — and by working on a paper, I mean that I had my laptop open while I FaceTimed a friend. It was an hour earlier for my friend, Elisa Woodham, who studies civil engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. I could see she was already tucked into her bed with a bowl of popcorn.

Woodham’s a total overachiever. She would never miss an assignment or go into an exam unprepared. So how was she in bed and relaxing by 10 p.m. on a weeknight? It was simple, she told me. She keeps business hours.

Like many American workers who leave their offices at 5 p.m., Woodham stopped studying by 9:30 p.m. The time limit not only guaranteed her a hefty eight and a half hours of sleep, it obliged her to complete her schoolwork within the time she had allotted herself.

After I talked to Woodham, I vowed to establish my own business hours. But within a week of shutting down all homework operations by 9:30 p.m., I found myself pulling a near-all-nighter to complete an assignment that had been hovering at the bottom of my to-do list. It took my body two days to recover after going to bed at 3 a.m., as it always does when I put off an assignment for too long. I could hardly keep my eyes open during lectures and I felt sluggish while exercising.

Perhaps I was missing Woodham’s time management skills, but I wanted to know if limiting my homework hours was really setting me up for academic success. Was it really worth sacrificing completing a paper on time for a good night’s sleep?

I reached out to Shelly Hershner, associate professor of neurology at the University of Michigan and author of the 2014 paper “Causes and consequences of sleepiness among college students.”

“I think it’s a brilliant idea,” Hershner told me when I told her about Woodham’s self-determined business hours. However, she worried that business hours aren’t a realistic option for most students.

“A big part of it is assignment times from the professors,” she said. She explained that by setting 10 p.m. deadlines, professors could prevent the usual onslaught of all-nighters that comes with a 9 a.m. deadline. Unfortunately,  Hershner didn’t think that instilling a school-wide homework cut-off time was realistic.

“I don’t think that schools are worried enough about sleep to fundamentally change everything. And the other part of that is, the way that things would get fundamentally changed, people may not like,” Hershner said.

She’s got a point. Woodham and I both like to be asleep by 11, but many students are night owls and would despise a homework schedule that favors morning people.

I came across one 2020 study from University of Huelva in Spain called “Influence of Sleeping Patterns in Health and Academic Performance Among University Students,” that suggested students who identify as morning people — referred to as “morning chronotypes” in the study — achieve better academic results. I asked one of the authors of the study, Felix Arbinaga, if this meant that completing homework in the morning may be an effective study tactic for all chronotypes. He didn’t think so. “Each student must find his or her moment,” he said. “For example, evening students may perform better if they study in the afternoon, when they are most active.”

Arbinaga shares Hershner’s skepticism regarding students establishing their own business hours. “It is difficult to set a cut-off time when studying at university,” he told me.

I asked Arbinaga if he thought students who prioritized sleep over homework would be more academically successful.

“In a student's life, it is difficult to maintain healthy sleep patterns. It is necessary to find a way to combine study and sleep, but it is clear that good quality sleep will help to improve academic performance,” he said.

Laura Thum, assistant director of outreach and prevention at MSU’s Counseling and Psychological Services, said she will often encourage students to stop studying in favor of getting a good-night’s sleep, even if they haven’t reviewed all of the information for a test.

“Of course the best way to avoid this is to appropriately manage your time,” she said. “Studying in chunks so you do not end up choosing between finishing an assignment and sleep.”

We’ve all been there — weighing the merits of an extra hour of studying during the wee hours of the night. More times than not, I opt for the extra hour of study, even if it is as unproductive as both Hershner and Arginaga’s research suggests. But it never feels good to show up to an exam unprepared and this homework-responsive sleep schedule doesn’t have to be permanent.

“I do think people’s sleep improves and stabilizes quite a bit once they are not a student,” Hershner said. “A lot of it is because the variable demands upon them aren’t the same. You may have different classes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.”

My friend Woodham has always been an academic weapon, so I guess I’m not surprised that she can pull off limiting homework hours on weeknights. For me, business hours may be a post-graduation delight to look forward to. According to Hershner, Arbinaga and Thum, I’m not alone.

For now, I’m going to set my own non-business hours. I will put aside a couple hours every afternoon for exercise or friends or scrolling on my phone. Perhaps I can’t control my assignment due dates and the volume of work I have, but I can control the volume of leisure that I maintain in my week: leisure hours, let’s call it.

As I was about to hang up with Hershner, she added one more thing: “Please, try to get at least six hours of sleep a night,” she said. “It helps.”