How Sleep Has Finally Become A Healthy Habit For Me by Mia

How Sleep Has Finally Become A Healthy Habit For Me by Mia - February 2026 Scholarship Essay

For many students, sleeping habits can affect their day to day performance from the second they wake up, good and bad. Being too tired can make you unfocused, drowsy, and even irritable, unable to work with your peers. Not just that, but the lack of sleep can greatly impact your personal and social life outside of school. A big difference that has made a difference in not just my academic, but also personal success, has been changing my sleeping habits.

I'm certainly not the first student to admit that I’ve never had the healthiest sleep schedule. In fact, sleep deprivation has been an issue of mine since elementary school. While the rest of my house was sleeping soundly in their warm bed sheets late at night, I, at the ripe age of ten, was still wide awake, staring up at the ceiling and wondering when the feeling of sleep would finally overtake me. I never brought this issue to my parents attention, however, until the seventh grade. After I told them, they invested in melatonin for me; small fruit-flavored gummies that magically made drowsiness hit me like a train. For a while, it worked just as intended. The melatonin gummies were no bigger than the size of my thumb, yet they helped me fall asleep quickly.

However, taking them every night didn’t go quite as planned once high school hit. Suddenly, pounds of homework and deadlines for projects overwhelmed me, leaving me no choice but to work on a lot of it at home. Between schoolwork and my personal hobbies, it was nearly impossible to balance them both while maintaining healthy sleeping habits. I had always been a straight-A student up until that point. It was all like a big snowball effect– an endless cycle of wanting to do more, but losing the sleep to do so.

That was until recently. One day, I decided to go to sleep earlier, to not do any of my work for one night, and it's almost shocking how much those few extra hours of sleep have changed my day to day life. I quickly realized that if I want to do everything I desire, I need the correct amount of sleep to do so. Suddenly, the rate at which I got my work done during class skyrocketed, leaving me more time after school to indulge in my interests, and even do extra things I’ve never had time to do before, like make myself some real food, make my bed everyday, and still have enough time to sit in silence with myself in between.

I can confidently say that just a few extra hours of sleep every night has changed my life for the better. From better productivity in school to having the luxury of free time at home, the benefits of good sleeping habits have finally been brought to my attention, and I don't intend for them to slip my mind ever again.