You're tired, it's some ungodly hour and you're debating whether you should stay up to finish some work or turn in for the night. We've all been there. If you've stumbled upon this page because you're too tired to decide for yourself whether you should stay up, you've come to the right place, my friend.

Here's the mental checklist I run through when I'm in your shoes.

1. Is it due that day?

I always ALWAYS ask myself this question. If it's not due that day, please PLEASE sleep. I know — you wanna get stuff done, you wanna be productive, you're really busy. But you have to take care of yourself. You cannot expect your brain to function optimally when you keep it up and drown it in coffee.

2. Are you not absorbing any information?

If you get to that point where you're nodding after every sentence and not even coffee can keep you up (I call these my brain dead moments), it's time to get some sleep. Honestly, you're just wasting your time at that point if you try to fight it and stay up. It's better to get even 20 minutes of sleep then to push yourself to stay up when your body is telling you to rest.

3. Are you using sleep deprivation as a form of self-harm?

As a college student, I personally didn't give much thought to keeping myself up, but it dawned on me at some point that continually sacrificing my wellbeing for school wasn't healthy. If you do that too, please notice it and makes steps to be kinder to yourself. You need to sleep.

School is important and some nights you might need to burn that midnight oil, but those nights shouldn't be all the time. The bottom line is that you and your health are and should always be a top priority.