WATERVILLE — Arianna Huffington told graduating seniors at Colby College Sunday that presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is an example of what lack of sleep can do and urged graduates to take time to recharge.

Huffington, co-founder, president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, said she knows firsthand the devastating effects of lack of sleep – she has collapsed because of working 18-hour days – and told the nearly 500 graduates, their families, friends and faculty that Trump shows all the signs of not enough sleep.

“He brags about how little sleep he gets and that he always sleeps with his phone beside him,” Huffington said in her commencement address at Colby’s 195th Commencement on Sunday.

What effect does that have? Huffington asked. For starters, the inability to process even basic information, she said to laughter and applause from the gathering on a sunny Miller Library lawn.

“Mood swings, fogged memories, incomprehension of a comprehensible problem and the occasional retweeting of Mussolini,” she said. “These are all symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation, according to the American Academy of Sleep, except the retweeting Mussolini part – that’s just pure Donald Trump.”

Huffington stressed the need for seven to nine hours of sleep per night. She told graduates to turn off their mobile devices once in a while as they enter the world after college to recharge and not just succeed in the world, but to change it.

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She said the concepts of “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” and other “early bird” cliches do not show colleagues how successful you are; it shows them you don’t care enough about yourself to really be a winner. Sleep, she said, it’s a revolution.

“The lack of sleep is the cognitive equivalent of coming to work drunk,” Huffington said. “Sleep is the ultimate performance enhancing drug and burnout is not essential to success.”

President David A. Greene presented bachelor of arts degrees to about 500 seniors during Sunday’s commencement. Members of the class of 2016 came to Colby from 31 states and are citizens of 31 countries, according to a preview of graduation on the college’s website. About two-thirds of the class studied abroad, traveling to more than 40 countries.

As president and editor-in-chief at the Huffington Post Media Group, Huffington has been named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people and Forbes magazine’s list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women. She serves on the boards of several nonprofits including the Center for Public Integrity, the Committee to Protect Journalists and A Place Called Home, which helps at-risk children in South Central Los Angeles.

In May 2005 she launched the Huffington Post, a news and blog site that has become a popular media outlet on the Internet.

 


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