The over-glorified all-nighter has taken hold of the minds of college students, high school students and young professionals everywhere. It seems there is never enough time in the day, and staying up all night becomes the only option.

What has happened to society's view of time management that the overall trend has become to stay up all night to get massive amounts of work done and generally disregard the need for sleep for one night... or even two?

As people joke about the zombie apocalypse coming from a rampant virus, the zombie-fied looks among my peer group would indicate it has already descended.

Absolutely everyone has faced those hard deadlines in which the only option to get work done is to stay up into the wee hours of the morning and put together final projects, write final papers and generally turn all that hard work from the semester into a viable representation of your newfound knowledge base.

I’ve been there too.

What I cannot comprehend is the ability of the young adult population to turn a "once in a while" necessity into a game of complaints and sleepless marathons. Where is this competition coming from, and when will the game stop?

Perhaps it may be time to step out of the race.

Could we just imagine for a moment, if time management and scheduling were treated with the same fervor as an all-nighter...

Where it would be a game to organize, and people bragged about how much sleep they got and how much work they put into their grade instead of how long they can push their luck and still B.S. a paper.

Or shall we define intelligence as a race to regurgitate the information we will forget the next week?

It’s true; doctors and parents have been talking about the importance of good sleeping habits for a long time. How do we bridge the gap between what we know to be true and the display of disregard for our sleep in our daily lives?

Just like anything, if there is going to be a change, it will come directly from the group it affects the most. We have to respect each other's needs for different amounts of sleep.

No one can make these decisions for us, and no one ever will.

It’s going to take people standing up and defending the need to sleep well. If we all step back and consider how greatly a positive view of sleep can impact our habits and our health, we can have a true goal to work toward.

It won’t be easy, but nothing worth it ever is.

Pick up a good habit, put down your pillows, close your eyes and dream with me.