The topic I have chosen to write about is sleep deprivation more specifically how sleep deprivation effects college students and their low academic performances. I’m interested in this topic because it relates to me and to many of my piers. I find that there is less and less time for sleep as a modern day college student. Not only do you have to keep your grades up but, you must make time for academic clubs, jobs, internships, socializing, and of course time with your family. There is a struggle when trying to find the balance for all of these activities. The questions I really want to try and answer is are college students depressed or are they just sleep deprived? Are students being misdiagnosed? These questions will be the main focus of my paper. My audience will consist of college students from undergrad to graduate schools and the councilors of the colleges. The reason I choose this audience is because I think students should be informed that sleep deprivation is a serious matter and should not be taken so lightly. I also choose the councilors because it is my opinion that some councilors may be overlooking sleep deprivation as a factor in college students’ low academic performance.

So far I am still trying to narrow down my topic a bit I am extremely confident in my academic source but not so confident in my public source. My topic is sleep deprivation but more specifically sleep deprivation in comparison to depression in college students and there academic performances. The reason I chose this topic is because it is relevant to me at this time and frankly I have always wanted to know more about it. What most people think is that college students are depressed rather than sleep deprived and therefore are not getting the proper treatment for there problem or in that sense most are unaware that they are sleep deprived at all. I want to focus more on the quality of sleep rather than the quantity of sleep because my argument ultimately is that how well we are sleeping affects our academic performance more than how many hours we are sleeping.

The question I have is am I narrowing my topic down enough? As for my counter argument I am having a hard time figuring that out. Should I compare all people to college students? Should I solely focus on non depressed students? I am also having a hard time finding sources and perhaps I am not using the databases correctly.

Overall I think I am on the right track but I still have some work to do. Ultimately I do not just want to talk stats and I think it would be smart to interview some college students at Baruch. (I hope I have the time)