Don’t actually raise your hand (unless you feel like it), but who gets the recommended nine hours of sleep during the school week?
That’s what I thought.
Most of us are walking the hallways of New Trier as zombies.
And, like the average student here, I have minimal sleep time, too.
I wake up well before school starts (two hours prior, if anyone was curious) because I am not a morning person, and I get ready for the day still half asleep.
Like the majority of my New Trier peers, I have classes, some easy, some hard. Then, I like to throw in a few extra curricular activities that get out around dinnertime.
Follow that with a mountain-high pile of homework and the next thing you know it’s midnight or later.
You all know the drill.
Time is of the essence. I don’t need to tell everyone this because it’s obvious. There isn’t any time to sleep with everything going on in our lives. However, there’s no question that we need sleep more than adults. As a matter of fact, we need just as much as babies do. The only minor difference is our bodies play games with us. The game is this: when we need to be awake, our bodies are not ready to wake up, and when we need to sleep our bodies are ready for activity. It’s not nice, but it’s the truth. And no, coffee is not always the solution we need.
Yet, this game our bodies play with us is something school administrators do not fully grasp.
Think about it: wouldn’t teachers hate it if we woke them up around midnight and forced them to graph complex calculus functions or analyze a passage from A Tale of Two Cities. So why should they wake us up at 8:15 am to do the same?
I probably spend a good hour–at least–of my day at school focusing on staying awake. Then the bell rings and I have no idea what just happened during those 40 minutes because I had to concentrate on staying awake. I think, and I am sure others would agree, that if we started just an hour later teachers would have fewer students taking a nap in their class and students would comprehend the material much better.
I know, I know. If we start later, then we would end later, and then sports would be messed up, blah, blah, blah.
Perhaps one day more schools will finally understand how the teenage body works and then we can all start later and then sports and extra curricular activities will be back on track.
Barrington High School is already ahead of us with a petition to start later. Why can’t we be nice neighbors, help them out, and start school later, too?
Besides being nice, we all need to look at the health risks to sleep deprivation.
According to WebMD, sleepiness causes accidents, “dumbs us down”, and puts us at risk for heart disease, heart attack, heart failure, irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, stroke, and diabetes.
Not to worry anyone, but Homecoming is approaching and you’re probably not going to be asked or you’ll be turned down if you are acting stupid.
Just let that sink in a bit.
Some teachers may say go to bed earlier, manage your time better, or don’t do as much after school.
While those are all good ideas, they will never work with how things are run right now. For starters, going to bed early would depend on the amount of homework we get, and teachers love to assign buckets of that; therefore, that recommendation is out of the question. Manage your time better. In some cases, yes, that’s what needs to happen, but again, most of the time students are up to their ears with jobs, activities, and homework. So that’s a no-go, too. How about my personal favorite: Don’t do as much after school?
Ha, yeah right.
If we did fewer activities we wouldn’t be well rounded and colleges would shake their heads as they tossed our applications in the trash.
The solution to sleep deprivation is so simple, why can’t we figure this out?
If school starts an hour later, for example, that would give our bodies a chance to be more in sync. Which means better learning, better grades, and a healthier lifestyle. And presto, the world can go ‘round again.
I just figured the answer out for everyone, so what’s the hold up? Get going.