The Bad Habits of OU

Photo by Kylee Weber

What is better for a college student: taking a nap or forgetting to eat? Trick question; they are equally bad for you. Students are developing many bad habits over their free time. These habits include, but aren’t limited to, forgetting to eat, taking naps throughout the day, drinking soda and procrastinating.

In listing these bad habits, I am completely guilty of doing all of them. I make excuses as to why I do each of these habits: forgetting to eat in-between classes and practices, taking naps before class because I had morning weights, drinking soda so I can stay awake for my class and procrastinating on my homework until 10 o’clock at night. All bad habits can be broken though; it’s just the decision of if we want to break them that makes it difficult.

A majority of students at OU are athletes, or involved with programs at the school, that take up time throughout the day. We all have that one day where you are running from class to weights to practice or rehearsal, and then to meetings for other activities. Those days seem to never end, then we lay in bed, remembering that we didn’t eat lunch, breakfast or even dinner.

Many students can’t find the time to stand in the long line in the caf or go back to their dorm, or, for some students, home to get a quick snack before their class starts. We tell ourselves “I’ll just eat later,” then later becomes midnight before we even get the opportunity to eat a proper meal. This becomes an issue because students are burning calories in weights, practice, while walking to class and other activities we tend to do on a daily basis. This can cause issues for students to maintain focus in class and get the terrible “hangry” emotion we all know too well. Instead, we should pack snacks in our backpack or meal plan for the week. Using travel containers, you can just heat up your meal and avoid the 15 minute wait for the caf food.

Every free moment a college student gets, we lay in bed and tell ourselves we can squeeze in a quick 15-minute nap. Almost every student is guilty of it. We stay up late at night trying to catch up on our favorite TV show, or just simply can’t fall asleep because we aren’t tired. This drains us throughout the day, making us wish we could just lay in bed and fall asleep. The only issue with naps, besides the fact that you have to wake up, is that it affects how you sleep at night. This can cause students to develop insomnia and increase difficulty for them to wake up the next morning. A nap can affect how easily we sleep at night and can cause serious damage to our sleep schedule. Many students should limit their naps to once a week in order to attempt to get a normal sleeping schedule that won’t cause them to be drowsy during the day and render them unable to fall asleep at night.

We all have had the day where you are extremely tired and unable to focus or stay awake for a class. Many students then reach for soda or other caffeinated beverages to keep them awake. However, soda can cause serious damage to our bodies. Instead of drinking soda, many students should consider a healthy alternative. Soda that has high fructose corn syrup can cause bad cholesterol for the body. In general, soda can cause tooth decay and caffeine addiction. What’s worse: smiling without teeth for the rest of our lives and living off of caffeine every day, or just simply limiting soda or even quitting it all together?

Almost all of us know the voice inside our head that tells us, “Oh crap,” when we remember the homework that is due at midnight or the next morning. We tell ourselves, “I’ll do it in a week,” then that turns into, “I’ll do it tomorrow,” then the late-night mental breakdowns begin. Procrastination has become a dangerous habit for students over the years due to the many distractions that jump into our day. This habit has been difficult for students for the past 20 years. Our parents always tell us not to procrastinate yet we do it anyway. But why?

A majority of the time, it’s simply because we have a million things running through our head, and we forget until our classmate texts us late at night asking if we did it. Many students find having an agenda or planner to write everything down, or set reminders to tell us that we have something due, as an easy way to insure they don’t procrastinate. The other way we can solve procrastination is simply doing the assignment as soon as possible to get it out of the way. The second you finish an assignment, this weight is lifted off your shoulders and you won’t spend the night having mental breakdowns, mad at yourself while you finish your homework at 1 a.m.

Each of these bad habits have pretty simple ways to break them. We all are guilty of having at least one of these bad habits. We choose not to break these habits because they have been a part of our daily routine and we seem attached to them. According to expert psychologist Gretchen Rubin, “It takes 21 days to break a bad habit.” The first few days will be the hardest, but once you get past them it will seem like a breeze.