I planned for it just as if it were any other test I was totally unprepared for: Wake up at 3 a.m. on test day and cram feverishly. I had gotten so good at this technique that I could just tell myself when to wake up as I fell asleep and in a few hours would jump out of bed panicked and ready to go. What I failed to keep in mind, however, was that while teens require 9.2 hours of sleep, according to the American Psychological Association’s Web Site (apa.org), I was averaging four to five hours of sleep a night during junior year and the first half of senior year.

The morning of the SAT, however, was different. As I was slowly drifting awake, I thought to myself, “Any moment now. Any moment.” But suddenly, an evil image from a previous dream flashed in my mind and an all-consuming, unexplainable terror engulfed me. The next instant, I felt surges of electricity coursing painfully through my body. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even cry out in pain. It felt like some one was choking me, pressing against my throat. It’s a demon, I thought.

At first I panicked. Although this terrifying dream thing had happened before — three other times to be exact — I had never experienced any pain before. I’m going to die, I thought. But then I remembered God was with me and immediately calmed down. That’s when I started singing the lyrics to all the Christian songs I could think of in my head. I am going to die, I thought, but I was at peace. I was ready. The electrifying pain seemed to slightly lessen in intensity, but then a big bright flash started the pain back in full force. I switched to a different song. The other one wasn’t working. Make the pain go away make the pain go away. Another flash, more pain.

Finally, my mind started to calm down. The electricity died, and I opened my eyes. The first thing I did was look at the clock: 4-ish a.m. Good, still time to study, I thought. But instead I sat straight up, grabbed my Bible and started reading right there in bed, instantly comforted, eventually crumpling back down on the pillow already asleep with my Bible clutched to my chest.

This “demon encounter,” I discovered through the Internet, was actually a combination of sleep paralysis and hypnopompic hallucinations, both of which can be induced by sleep deprivation, increased stress and irregular sleeping patterns. Sleep paralysis is similar to the natural paralysis the body induces during sleep to prevent the dreamer from physically acting out dreams. However, during sleep paralysis the sleeper may be awake, yet still unable to move. Often times the hallucinations occur with sleep paralysis and create a nightmarish experience.

If you’re still one of those students who believes that sleep is not an imperative, just wait, you’re risking even more. Sleep deprivation, the main cause of my harrowing experience, causes many other immediate and long-term consequences. Seniors, juniors, are you starting to feel moody? Are you hyper one moment and depressed the next? Have you broken down in tears from the stress? Are you having trouble remembering things, not just facts and numbers but people’s names? Do you constantly feel fatigued? Have you experienced bouts of dizziness? Slurred speech? Are you constantly falling asleep in class even though you enjoy the subject? These are just some of the immediate effects of sleep deprivation, according to school district nurse Maryann Rainey. Researchers suspect long-term effects include permanent memory capacity loss and stunted life expectancy.

Though the research is ongoing, students don’t have to look very far to see the long-term results of sleep deprivation. In her late 20’s, English teacher Debbie Canepa-Tencza pulled a historic all-nighter to start and completed a 16-page graduate school essay in one night. With the help of her youth, two two-liter bottles of Shasta Diet Cherry Coke, 12 cups of green tea and 24 cups of black coffee Canepa managed to finish the essay and receive an “A,” but at the expense of her health. Now at the age of 54, Canepa said she can feel the her brain immediately switching from wakefulness to dreams, sometimes catching her in risky situations. She’s found herself dreaming while in the act of swimming and once woke up after crashing her car in a centuries-old lava bed with her mother and dog as passengers.