"If you leave work at 5 and start at 9, and are sensible and live within 20 minutes of work (which you can on a banker's salary, at least in NYC), that's like 3 whole hours of sleep."
First, as stated, these are interns, which wouldn't have the money to live in NYC. Second, three hours of sleep may help but in the long run it is just as unhealthy. This is shown by the answer to myth #3 on WebMD's "7 Myths About Sleep" (http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/7-myths-about-...).
"Second, how many times did you pull a few all-nighters in a row during college? I can't even count. I certainly didn't die."
How many times did take prescription pills to stay awake? Mix that in with lack of sleep and lack of exercise (after all, how are you going to exercise if you are working all of the time) and you have a potential recipe for disaster. Plus, there are the possibilities of health conditions that the individual may not know about or may not want to disclose in this particularly fast-paced and competitive environment.
I've had several friends intern as investment bankers and management consultants in the past couple years. The going rate in NYC is about $60k-80k prorated, I believe -- more than enough for a room in Manhattan (which is where they all lived). Even if that weren't the case, most in that career track come from relatively well-off families anyway.
I still agree it's an insanely unhealthy and stressful lifestyle, which is why I never even considered it, but these interns are certainly able to make it home rather quickly from the office. And judging from Facebook statuses and casual conversation, they often take pride in all the hours they put in. This is a very ambitious crowd.
More than enough for where in Manhattan is the real question. $60K a year isn't a great deal of money in NYC. It's very livable - but not if your criteria is "within 20 min of FiDi". You can probably get a decent room on the Upper West Side or Upper East Side, but then you're nowhere close to being within 20 min from work, especially in the middle of the night.
"They're just not aware of how sleepy they are," says Thomas Roth, Ph.D., sleep researcher at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
I don't mean to disparage the Dr, but how does he know that about those specific people? It seems exceedingly presumptuous to say, basically, that he knows these people whom he has probably never met in person better than they know themselves.
"Wakefulness for 18 hours makes you perform almost as though you're legally drunk," says Walsleben.
This is stated like it is a law of nature, true for all people in all circumstances. Is it though? If I well rested beforehand I know I can go at least 18 hours and still function nominally. "Well, your perception and evaluation of your own performance degrades as well. You just think you are performing nominally." I concede the possibility, but when I look back later (well-rested again) at my work I can only conclude that if the above statement is true then I must be a very high-functioning drunk. Driving particularly is hard to measure outside of a controlled environment--it is easy to over-estimate yourself unless something goes very wrong--but I would be very interested in doing some sort of before and after. Take me when I am well-rested and establish a baseline driving performance. Then take me when I am 18 hours out (after being well-rested, as stated above) and compare the same performance. I would expect to see a drop in performance, but I highly doubt it would be as exaggerated as this claims. I would not presume that I am indicative of the normal population, but I think I would stand as a counter-example to the absolute veracity of that statement.
I am not arguing against moderation in our sleeping patterns, and I am not contesting the results of the many studies published. I just find it hard to swallow when we draw these conclusions and state them like they are universal truths about all people in all circumstances when the reality is that people and circumstances vary far more than the studies account for, especially since we don't really understand the causal relation between sleep and performance.
First, as stated, these are interns, which wouldn't have the money to live in NYC. Second, three hours of sleep may help but in the long run it is just as unhealthy. This is shown by the answer to myth #3 on WebMD's "7 Myths About Sleep" (http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/7-myths-about-...).
"Second, how many times did you pull a few all-nighters in a row during college? I can't even count. I certainly didn't die."
How many times did take prescription pills to stay awake? Mix that in with lack of sleep and lack of exercise (after all, how are you going to exercise if you are working all of the time) and you have a potential recipe for disaster. Plus, there are the possibilities of health conditions that the individual may not know about or may not want to disclose in this particularly fast-paced and competitive environment.