Imagine you’re walking into the doors of the 11/12 building on a Monday morning, bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready for the day. Well, actually more like bug eyed and barely able to open the door without an immense amount of effort tailed, and bags under your eyes so dark it looks like you lost in a boxing match the night before. Was it worth it? You ask yourself as you drag through the day, trying to keep your head up.  Staying up all night to study for that anatomy test can really take a toll on your body, as well as your mental state. Is it worth staying up to study and not getting the sleep you need to stay focused and awake during the test?

Most of us wonder if it’s even worth studying for if we aren’t going to retain any of the information in the morning because of the lack of sleep. High school students all over the world struggle with this nasty feat, and most students are running themselves ragged pulling all-nighters just to get that red A on a test paper. When it turns out, after 7 hours of staring at the anatomy textbook in the dim light of your room when everyone else is asleep, it actually hurt you instead of helped you.

A new study by the researchers at the University of California states that teens who stay up late are more likely to have academic problems the following day, which includes doing poorly on the test they specifically stayed up so late to study for. While your first guess would be that it’s better to stay up those extra hours to cram anatomical vocab words into your brain, it’s actually detrimental to your grade, not helpful in the slightest.

The data from the research actually  showed that kids who didn’t get enough sleep were not only more likely to have problems understanding material during class, a result the researchers had expected, but they were also more likely to do badly on tests, quizzes and homework. It is a lot more difficult to learn and stay focused while studying if you are lacking sleep.

So even though many of us won’t take this to heart, and will continue drinking 4 cups of coffee at 3am trying to keep our eyes open to reread the text book before a test, we should all consider the consequences of cramming the night before.