Disclaimer: Any power output figures either written or expressed are, at best, estimates and should be taken with a grain of salt.
Sleep is a funny thing. Funny because it is laughable how much and how little some people need. Post-secondary students, at least the successful ones, don’t seem to need much of it – they can pull all-nighter after all-nighter when studying for and writing exams. University and College are presumably designed to push students to the limits of their memorizing and sleep-deprivation abilities, as if either were a metric for “intelligence”. You don’t need to be a medical professional to know that the more you exert yourself, either physically or mentally, the more sleep you will require. This is true for much of the study body, but some individuals are able to perform near their peak with limited rest. It is these Mendelian traits that are selected for in Universities, at least the Canadian ones. So when individuals such as myself, who require somewhere around 9 hours of sleep to function well, pursue undergraduate studies, the results aren’t ideal. I bear no resentment against my physiology, only a misguided post-secondary educational system in Canada. Just getting into University ensures that the students are adequetly intelligent. Assuming that entrance requirements create some kind of level playing field, why select for a single attribute when determing our nation’s future doctors, lawyers, and researchers? Shouldn’t we look for more well-rounded individuals? Ahhh, it feels good to vent.