Caffeining Through Finals Week
- Vraj Shah
- Jun 27
- 2 min read
You know the feeling. It’s 10:30, and you still have what seems like a whole week’s worth of work that’s due the next morning, not to mention the fact that finals week has you doing anything to secure the last minute grade. A growing number of teenagers have been relying on caffeine in order to make it through these days, and even in order to make it through school on a day-to-day basis.
What does caffeine really do? It blocks the release of adenosine into the synaptic gaps between neurons. This is the neurotransmitter that makes you feel tired, and without its release, you’ll feel more alert. Caffeine also increases the release of adrenaline, which is a hormone that makes you feel alert.
At first caffeine just seems like a surefire way of getting your work done through the night. But in the end, it harms your sleep cycle, and nervous system. Obviously, one drink to push through one night does not do much, but repeated usage leads to lack of sleep, and lack of quality sleep. It is harder to enter REM sleep, which is a phase of deep sleep. Furthermore, it can shift your sleep cycle, to where you need to take more naps to accommodate the sleep that you are losing at night. Your tolerance to caffeine also increases, so you are consuming more and more caffeine in order to stay awake.
A bigger issue is the amount of caffeine that you take. If someone at home makes you a cup of coffee, you are better off drinking that then drinking energy drinks that are catered to young adults. These energy drinks often have more than twice the recommended amount of caffeine, which could lead to heart arrhythmias and other cardiovascular issues. Caffeine stays in our system for a long time, so even if you drink caffeine at a reasonable time, there is still a significant amount of it left in your body after 7-10 hours.
Is it really worth it? Although finals week is very overwhelming for a lot of us, it is important to prioritize our health so that we can perform to our best abilities during finals testing. This means properly scheduling our work so that we do not have to rely on caffeine to push through the night. And if we are backed up in a corner where we absolutely have to get through the night, make sure you take the right amount of recommended caffeine, and an amount that will allow you to reset your body’s clock in due time.
Sources
Art by Aarushi S
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