The Midnight Oil Crisis

This imagined story of one is the real experience of many. It is rarely a surprise to see the campus buzzing with energy past midnight, whether it’s the chatter at Aromas or the tables at the Reading Hall. The institute has a sense of beauty even in those wee hours before sunrise, as one appreciates the thriving student culture that has existed at IITB since time immemorial. That nighttime grind, however, furthers a vicious cycle of sleep deprivation passed down to each batch.

There could be a multitude of reasons for participating in this cycle and losing sleep. A good percentage of us suffer from this pattern quite regularly, sometimes for days or even weeks on end. As a result, a lot of the instizens seem visibly afflicted with chronic fatigue. 

Don’t get us wrong, unlike some other nosy figures in the institute, the intent here is not to push the agenda of ‘students must sleep on time,’ and in the process, dismantle all of the spotty yet admirable legacy we have built, particularly in freedom. An interesting yet inaccurate correlation among certain circles of the campus is that freedom ruins sleep schedules, subsequently affecting morning lectures, academics, and the culture of the institute. This article is not a lecture on sleeping on time – it is rather an attempt to understand if the issue is purely conceived out of choice, or systematic problems beyond our control. 

In the days leading up to Inter-IIT, we’d be prepping in the Convocation Hall from around 2 PM to 5 or 6 in the morning. That’s nearly 15 straight hours every day. And it wasn’t just preparation, half the time went into waiting, discussing, re-discussing, or just existing in a haze of fatigue. We barely had time to eat or even think straight, let alone sleep. I’m not saying we shouldn’t push hard in the final days, but the sheer lack of efficiency and care for our well-being made it feel less like a celebration of art and more like a test of endurance.

–An anonymous respondent

Similarly, most student bodies in the institute are often seen holding their member meetings at night, which often extend beyond midnight, and they have no other choice when the rest of the day is already riddled with other commitments. An ex-club convenor had to say this about the situation,

“One thing that always struck me as unnecessary was the late-night council meetings. Especially during (popular cult flagship event), these meetings would stretch way into the night, sometimes starting past midnight and ending only when people were too exhausted to continue. There’s this unspoken belief that the later you stay up working, the more dedicated or “prepared” you are. But honestly, it felt more performative than productive. We were all just burning ourselves out in the name of commitment.”

Tech teams are particularly notorious for this, with preparation for competitions requiring multiple sleepless nights. They have particularly raised some eyebrows with the level of time commitment demanded of the team members, blurring the line between dedication and devotion. Many tech team members admit they are part of the grind in hopes of going to the competitions only. As a tech team member mentioned,

“Building something innovative takes endless hours of trial and error. And when you’re surrounded by a tech team that’s pouring in crazy dedication, it messes with your own sense of balance. You start feeling guilty for sleeping, like rest is a luxury you haven’t earned yet. At some point, ‘I only slept 3 hours’ becomes less of a complaint and more of a badge of honour.”

“I’ve always been a night owl, so I prefer working until the sun comes up. In IBs, however, most of our work requires us to be active during the day. So, apart from team meetings that may extend until 4 AM, we’re actually expected to be wide awake throughout the day. Whether we get enough sleep is another story, as most of us crash only after Chaayos shuts for the night and wake up trapped in an endless loop of regret and missed alarms.”

In all of these situations, it is understandable that an ideal sleep schedule is not always an option. But we must still ask if the students are in it for the right reasons – if it is born out of pure passion, or do we see objective benefit to it? These motivations are important to distinguish because they tie in with the larger concern of hypercareerism and pre-professionalism in the institute and the generation even. Because the sacrifice of sleep is not viewed as a sacrifice of health, but rather an ‘activity’ that can be let go, a notion that can have serious repercussions. 

“I know a student who pulled an all-nighter to study for an 8:30 am quiz – he stayed up till 8 am, then accidentally fell asleep and missed the exam entirely. That’s when I realised just how counterproductive pulling all-nighters can be,” one student recounted.

But it’s not just exams. Frequent quizzes, deadlines, and late-night work culture condition students into staying up late, turning nocturnal hours into the norm rather than the exception. Intriguingly, this temporal drift is not always externally imposed, as even when afforded ample daylight hours, many students consciously make the choice of postponing impending tasks until the last moment. In this ecosystem, procrastination is not a personal failing, but a shared, almost ritualised academic modus operandi. 

“It’s all those 11:59 PM deadlines that drive us to the last hour of the day,” another student explained. “That sort of creates a psychological wiring to stay up late, and eventually stay up till sunrise.”

Sleep is a biologically essential process, playing a well-documented role in cognitive performance, memory consolidation, learning, and emotional regulation. However, studies show that less than 10% of undergraduate students get the minimum recommended 7 hours of sleep per night during finals weeks. 

The correlation between sleep and academic performance is well supported by empirical evidence, with one multi-institutional study finding that for every hour of total average nightly sleep lost early in the semester, there was an associated 0.175 point reduction in a student’s end-of-term CGPA. This effect is particularly pronounced among those clocking fewer than 6 hours of sleep per night – a demographic perilously common during examination season.

Research shows that pulling all-nighters does more harm than good, as it doesn’t just wear you out, it actively blocks your brain from retaining what you’ve learned. In one experiment, students who forgo sleep for over 30 hours didn’t improve in cognitive tasks even after two full nights of recovery sleep. Their well-rested peer, meanwhile, kept getting better with each day. 

“Sometimes, even when I have prepared well in advance, I still end up studying late the night before the exam, just to realise that those last few hours of cramming barely made any difference,” shared one student. 

Beyond grades, the repercussions of sleep deprivation extend to affect learning and erode the very cognitive faculties students rely upon. A lack of sleep before exams will negatively affect memory-based exams, as memory consolidation happens in sleep. Even for logic-based or calculative exams, there are enough studies linking a lack of sleep with decreased alertness. For example, according to a study, losing 1.5 hours of sleep can reduce alertness by up to 32% the next day, pointing fingers at the well-adopted strategy of all-nighters before exams.

Yet, exams are merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The ramifications of sustained sleep deprivation permeate daily academic functioning, manifesting in inattentiveness and dozing off during lectures, diminished participation in discussions or group work, and a pervasive sense of cognitive fatigue.

“Honestly, I don’t think the issue is just the number of courses or labs — that’s somewhat dependent on the student. But what really makes things difficult is how staggered our schedules can be. Take my day, for example: I have lectures from 8:30 to 9:30, then 11:30 to 12:30, then again from 3:30 to 5, and finally 7 to 8:30. It’s just four classes, but spread out like that, the day feels completely fragmented and unproductive.”

–An anonymous respondent

Over time, these impairments aggregate, and when sustained over the length of an academic program, such chronic fatigue can erode a student’s ability to engage deeply with the curriculum and develop the critical thinking skills that higher education demands. For instance, it’s not uncommon to see students enter summer vacations completely drained, often not out of disinterest, but because the sheer exhaustion from the semester leaves them mentally and physically depleted. 

Yet, for many, this nocturnal productivity is not merely a matter of preference but an inevitability born out of systematic pressures. The structure of academic life, replete with back-to-back lectures, labs stretching into the evening, followed by a relentless parade of deadlines, leaves scant room for self-study. The competitive environment at an institute like ours cultivates a rather overlooked expectation: excelling academically is no longer sufficient. One must simultaneously juggle the demands of extracurricular pursuits, PoRs, and all while cultivating a happening social life. Faced with this multifaceted juggling, students find that burning the midnight oil becomes less of a choice than a pragmatic concession to simply keep pace with the curve. 

Even for those who try to sleep early, hostel life doesn’t always make it easy. The design of the old hostels, characterised by closely packed and often thin-walled rooms, means that noise travels easily. However, it’s not just about how these places are built; such inconveniences are also a function of people being inconsiderate of each other’s living spaces. Wingmates or roommates, no matter how well-intentioned, can become a source of disturbance. Impromptu gatherings, loud conversations, and someone knocking on your door for a last-minute plan can keep you up, even if you were set on getting some sleep.

Even if you are not a night owl, your roommate deciding to study in the room at midnight will most definitely render your sleeping on time moot. The interplay of social obligations and environmental cacophony contributes to a culture where the boundaries between communal engagement and personal well-being blur, often at the cost of a good night’s rest.

This also has to do with not wanting to lose out on socialising. FOMO can easily drive people to make impulsive decisions, and the easiest of them seems to be to give up a couple of hours of sleep. When hangouts are happening late at night, a good number of us wouldn’t think twice before ditching the bed. The urgency of having it all in the limited time we have in college, to live in the moment and create college memories for a lifetime, can often lead us to not think twice about being deprived of sleep.

As we talk of the bed, let’s not forget that in today’s world, the time of hitting the bed is not the same as the time when you actually sleep. For a good number of people, a 30-minute dose of reels is what often seals the deal. ‘Bedtime procrastination’, as we call it, is another factor that seems to eat up those precious slumber hours. This can be attributed to the larger social media addiction in a generation with fried dopamine receptors; we want more and more of it and everything else.

Some members of the older generations on the campus often opine that all of these aspects, mainly emanating from the freedom that IITB provides to students, are responsible for sleep-deprived students. However, they fail to realise that sleep deprivation is a generational issue – it occurs even in campuses across the country that place curfews and restrictions on the movements of students. This does not deter students in these other colleges from having active student bodies that excel in activities beyond the classroom, albeit at the cost of sleep. Hence, we feel that measures like these are unlikely to affect, let alone improve, the sleep deprivation problem. 

This all-nighter strategy before exams, as well as general sleep deprivation, also contributes negatively to dietary habits. There is a well-known link between a lack of sleep and heightened appetite and craving for high-calorie food. This problem might be further aggravated by the fact that now delivery agents are not allowed to enter the campus after 11 PM. As a result, students have even fewer options. If a student dislikes the campus canteens for any reason, they may be forced to rely on junk food such as chips, soft drinks, and other unhealthy snacks.

Studies have shown that late-night eating is associated with impaired glucose tolerance and reduced microbial diversity in the gut, both of which are linked to long-term metabolic issues. To add to this conundrum, there is also a visible rise in the growing culture of gulping energy drinks just to feel alert and sleep. This has its own consequences; for example, consuming more than 2 (250ml) energy drinks has side effects associated with high caffeine consumption, like dehydration, heart palpitations and insomnia, with the risk being even higher for people with prior heart conditions. link

The usual pattern after realising that one is not going to get enough sleep is to start taking intermittent naps. Napping is an integral part of most college cultures, and IITB is no exception. It’s almost a ritual in itself. As soon as students get their timetable for the next semester, one of the first things they do is hunt for days with the dreaded 8:30 AM class and immediately scout for a free slot later in the day to catch up on their nap.

While napping as a strategy to fight sleep deprivation is still a topic of study, the current literature suggests that short naps (up to 30 min) are good for recovering alertness, cognitive function, and memory consolidation, but these results are short-lived (a few hours).

Suggesting that if you are pulling an all-nighter for whatever just or lazy reason, taking a short nap before the exam should theoretically translate to better performance. However, it is important to note that all of this is true only for short-term sleep deprivation; if you are chronically sleep deprived, naps are not much of a help, as even one hour of potential sleep debt takes four days to recover to their optimal level.

Naps cannot offer this recovery because they lack the deeper stages of the sleep cycle as compared to a night’s sleep. Thus, it is no surprise that people who nap more than 60 minutes are found to be more susceptible to higher blood pressure, diabetes, body weight issues, etc. –ref

Despite knowing most of it, many of us won’t change our lifestyle.

 “I’m only doing unhealthy things during college, and  I will fix my sleep, diet, etc, once I graduate.”

A question that most of us then usually pose ourselves is this: If success is indeed tied to sacrifice, then why fuss over doing the same with some sleep? And the dilemma is valid – we are in an era where the grind mindset is being continuously glorified and its relevance to making money is being made aptly clear. Against such conversations, students at IITB have also made it their ambition to ‘have it all’, because everything that you do on and off the campus has the potential of making your resume more attractive. And when the battle against the time constraints starts getting out of hand, sleep is the most obvious and convenient surrender.

An interesting phenomenon in this regard has been the change in the career funnel among the UGs post-Covid. With more companies switching to the PPO model, the emphasis on landing ‘good’ internships has vastly increased. This, in turn, has pushed the stress cycle ahead by a year, causing students to invest their energy into projects and PoRs much more and much earlier than what would be otherwise expected from them. The impetus to perform big and early, especially when already bestowed with the IIT tag, has dealt unintended blows to how we value physical and mental health in the institute.

This points to a larger, internalised culture problem that students at IITB and beyond are facing. ‘Just a matter of 4 years’ – is what one would often hear from a senior. Why does health suddenly become a negotiable aspect of our lives, even if it is just for 4 years? We were probably too scared to ask these questions during our JEE days, for the IIT dream was too good to miss. But simple extrapolation would reveal that the chase for success, or at least the twisted version of it that is being fed to the students, is never-ending, and by this logic, health would forever be something that can be ‘temporarily’ toyed with for long-term aspirations. 

‘Sleep’ as a concept seems too trivial to be addressed formally – bringing up different concepts of a happening campus nightlife may feel a more worthy inclusion in a fresher’s orientation than the importance of sleeping on time. But that must not stop us from initiating serious conversations that actually help people (not just students) understand that the thing at stake is not just a lifestyle accessory. The importance of what we do when we pull late nights for days on end is often undeniable, but we must not be deterred from asking if there are healthier alternatives to the entire approach.