On this lovely
three-day weekend we're having, I presume that most of you are looking forward
to catching up on sleep above all else with this Monday off. Senior year has
definitely come in at full throttle, with the balance of school, work, college
applications, sports, etc., and it's hard to remember to fulfill our basic
needs sometimes. I know I'm not alone in forgetting to shower, go to the gym,
or even eat dinner sometimes. There simply aren't enough hours in the day for
us and all our work. Unfortunately, the one that suffers the most as a result
of our crazy schedules is usually our sleep cycles.
The National Sleep
Foundation claims that teens our age should be aiming for eight-and-a-half to
almost nine-and-a-half hours of sleep each night. My response to that was
"Over eight hours?? My nights usually average five to seven hours! This is
unrealistic." However, I am the
first to admit, the morning after those five-hour nights, I am a zombie. I
don't want to talk to anybody except the sacred Starbucks barista and his
endless fountains of caffeine. My overall functioning that day is inhibited.
And as the vicious cycle would have it, when I stress about not getting enough
sleep, it just keeps me up at night even later.
In the article
linked here, Siri Carpenter presents multiple sides of the argument. One side
says that the less sleep we get, the lower our grades are. A statistic about
car accidents is also included, attributing drowsiness and fatigue to the cause
of around 100,000 accidents among young
drivers. Another doctors opinion, however, says that as we get older, we just
need less sleep, so we don't feel the need to try and get those eight hours.
The article lists tons of possible effects of our insomnia on our developing
minds, many of which I'm sure you are all aware of.
What do you think?
Do you function better on less sleep? Do
you ever feel the need to pull all-nighters? How do you feel you perform your
daily tasks (tests, homework, driving) on minimal amount of sleep? Do you think
this has taken a toll on your health?
I know from personal experience, and I'm sure my friends will vouch for this, I need sleep. I am a mess when I don't get enough sleep, the problem is I never have enough time to get things done. If I still have a list of things to do, but I know I am too tired to keep my eyes open any longer, I get a cup of coffee and finish the work anyway. It has become more important for me, and most of us I believe, to get our work done rather than a few extra hours of sleep.
ReplyDeleteOne of the negative effects I've realized is I end up making myself sick. When I have only a few hours of sleep for a couple nights in a row, and stressful work load, chances are the next week I will have a cold or something. My body can't handle the stress it's put under without the right amounts of sleep, especially in unpredictable weather we are having. Ironically, when I'm sick my mother tells me, "Just sleep it off and you'll feel better." While, if I had time to sleep from the beginning, we wouldn't be having this problem would we?
As IHA students, we all know how little sleep we get sometimes and how much we love sleeping in on days we have off or on those glorious holiday breaks. But for me, personally, it matters more how WELL I sleep rather than how LONG I sleep. I can sleep in until 10am, but I will periodically wake up to go to the bathroom or check my phone, so I'm not fully sleeping. Whereas, some nights I might go to bed at midnight and wake up at the usual 6:30am for school and feel just fine because I slept so soundly.
ReplyDeleteI will stay up to study for a big test in a difficult class, but now I wonder if my lack of sleep will then cancel out all my hard work studying for an A. I find some of the research true, but what if I am staying up all night to study for a test? Even though I spent hours studying and only slept for 2 hours, will I still fail? But, if I go to bed at 8pm and wake up at 6:30am without studying, will I do better? I think how sleep affects a person is unique to each individual and their own sleep schedule. And, some people just aren't morning people, regardless of what time it is, they just don't want to be bothered. In my case, I will admit to being tired and slow-going in the morning but I won't be irritated or angry. So maybe it isn't based on the number of hours a person sleeps that lowers grades or causes mood swings, maybe its based on the person and their need for a specific amount of sleep.
I know from personal experience that without sleep, I can't function. Even if I still have homework that needs to be done, I know I need to go to bed by a certain time, otherwise it'd just be pointless in going to school. I exploit my time wisely by planning out what things need to be completed the night before, and what can be worked on before school, at lunch, etc. Even an extra half hour can make all the difference in how I feel in the morning.
ReplyDeleteJackie brought up a good point: is it better to sleep and not study, or not sleep and study? Although I agree it is dependent upon the individual, sleep is just generally crucial to your well-being, like Katlyn said. Just last week, I started coming down with a really nasty cold, and I'm convinced I was able to kick it by the amount of rest I got over the weekend. I remember once last year I was curious if sleep really made me more attentive during classes, so I did a little experiment: I finished all of my homework really early, and instead of staying up and watching TV like I normally do, I went to bed around 8:30. The next morning, I felt fantastic. I was attentive almost the entire day, I was more patient, I participated more, and I generally felt just so much better. Unfortunately, it's impossible to do this everyday, but I'd seriously suggest to try it at least once so we can all have a better understanding of our bodies and how much sleep is required of us to function at a satisfactory level.
As with everyone else, when I don't get enough sleep, I tend not to function as well as I would on say 8 hours of sleep if I'm really lucky. Because my brother goes to Don Bosco and I live all the way in Sparta, I have to get up at 5:50 to get him to school at 7:25. If what the article says is true, then I am missing out on at least 40 minutes of sleep that could potentially be a factor in whether I am getting good grades or not. From getting up at 6:50 last year to getting up an entire hour earlier this year, I can definitely attest to the fact that I am more tired and have to struggle to focus in classes when I have a really late night. I think that schools should take this consideration into account and start later. There's really no benefit in having a group of unresponsive students in school an hour earlier if they're not functioning at their highest potential.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, we, at least in my case, tend to get into a vicious, unhealthy sleep cycle. This year, I have gotten into a really bad habit of going to bed around midnight just because I can't even focus anymore and set my alarm for 4 o'clock so I can wake up and get some unfinished work done. And I know that I kidding myself thinking that I am fully awake and actually accomplishing stuff whenever all I want to do is sleep. Sunday was my first day to sleep in this week and I slept a full 13 hours, another thing that probably screwed up my sleep schedule. School is seriously damaging my sleep cycle, and I think that more schools should really look into what their start times as well as work load is doing to their students' health.
It is often said that sleep can affect one's performance, and as an IHA student, I can attest to that. In contrast to middle school where I would get around 9 hours of sleep each night, I now get somewhere between 2-7 hours of sleep per night at IHA. Between school, volleyball, and other extracurricular activities, it's almost impossible for me to get the suggested eight-and-a-half to nine-and-a-half hours of sleep per night. While some may argue that in order to get more sleep, students should cut down on the amount of extracurricular activities that they participate in, there is such an emphasis on being a well-rounded, constantly-involved student, especially at IHA, that we are almost forced to find a way to deal with balancing each task on our own without becoming less involved. This pressure makes it extremely difficult for me to balance my workload and amount of sleep during the year because I know how important it is to keep up my involvement in school affairs.
ReplyDeleteI know that when I don't get enough sleep, it really hurts my performance and personality during the day. I am often cranky and too tired to do any work during class. I feel like I'm just going through the motions and it becomes a challenge for me to learn and focus as much as I should. Just as Ashley said, I believe that schools should really reconsider their schedules because sleep is a huge factor when it comes to academic performance, but the workload is what's ultimately causing students' lack of sleep. For me, there are days when I can barely even keep my eyes open, not by choice, but because my body just can't take it anymore. I'm afraid that in the future, my lack of sleep is going to have an extremely detrimental effect on my health. My sleep cycle has significantly changed over the years and I can't help but think if students from schools other than IHA have the same dilemma.
See, sleep is a touchy subject with me considering I don't get very much of it. I'm always so jealous of those kids that "love their sleep" and say "sleep is their best friend", etc. I usually get about 3 hours of sleep on a good night. I've been an insomniac since I was about six and have tried many medications and to save you the complicated back story, basically I'm just waiting to "grow out of it" or "cope with it better". Anyway, my point of this isn't to tell you how little of sleep I get, but how much I agree with this article that it affects you as a person.
ReplyDeleteI know I sometimes go a day or two with no sleep, and when I do my brain literally doesn't work. Even now when I need to be 100% with my crazy life, I feel myself thinking through hot fudge. I literally feel the synapse growing larger and larger when I try to think. Not only do I feel slower when I try to think when I'm tired, but I also feel scattered. My memory is absolutely awful right now and I know it's because of my lack of sleep. I'll forget something the minute I'm told it and studying? Psh, studying seems to be a waste of time now because when I go to take the test I can't remember anything I literally spent hours on the night before. Besides my performance in school, like Michelle said, it makes me well, just down-right cranky. I suddenly become extremely pessimistic when I'm overtired and anyone who knows me knows I'm usually pretty positive.
Overall, my point is that I completely agree with the fact that we need more sleep...actually getting that sleep on the other hand could be difficult...
I strongly agree with the article, Yiana, and everyone who has commented. Like Katlyn and Michelle mentioned, sleep deprivation really effects your body. I remember freshman year when I would fall asleep on top of my books after track practice. I constantly got colds and struggled to remember things because I was always so tired. I also agree with what Jess said about sleeping taking precedence over studying. As I said, I tend to forget things when I don;t get enough sleep, so all the time I spent doing my homework and paying careful attention in class goes out the window if I stay up all night before a test to cram.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with what everyone is saying because I have experienced it myself as well. If I don't get enough sleep, I am especially fatigued, quiet, grouchy, impatient, unfocused, and unable to use my brain to the fullest learning capacity. As a person with seizures, a lack of sleep not only affects me in the ways mentioned, but also is something that could potentially be a factor in having a seizure or not. I usually only get five to seven hours of sleep Sunday through Friday because of the amount of work I get from my classes. However, I usually try to take a catnap after school, break up how and when I work, eat meals and snacks, and other things that help to balance out my schedule. This way I can remain healthy and not entirely sleep deprived. The odd thing is that I tend to write really well when I am up late at night and have therefore gotten into a bad habit of pulling all-nighters when writing essays.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting fact about sleep is that the human body should actually not be sleeping a straight 8 hours but rather in periodic spaces of time of a span of 14 hours. This "broken" fourteen hour sleep was how humans would function before the advent of electric light, which led to the conventions of how long we are awake in this day and age. In this article, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783, it is stated that humans would sleep for a few hours, wake up, socialize, and do tasks for two hours, and then go back to sleep before rising when the sun came up. So, like jessica said, it is not the quantity of sleep that matters, but the quality.
I know for a fact that I function better when I have enough sleep like everyone else has been saying. There just isn't enough time in the day to complete everything that needs to be done. Between school,sports, clubs and homework, there is no time for sleep. Even on weekends, I find myself waking up early for swim practice or community service, so I never really have a chance to catch up on sleep. In the article that Yiana posted, it recommends that schools start later, so that teens can catch up on sleep. I personally believe that this wouldn't help because teens would still have to go to school for x amount of hours each day and therefore end at a later time. So now their activities and homework would start and end later. They would end up getting the same amount of sleep.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that something needs to change, in order to help teens achieve a healthy amount of sleep. Last Monday morning in a first period calculus class, Mr. Millard was trying to engage us in a class discussion that required a high level of thinking. More than seventy five percent of the room looked like they were about to fall asleep. We were too tired to raise our hands, let alone think about math. I think that this lack of sleep is hurting our ability to learn new topics. Maybe if I had two or three more hours of sleep that night I would have been able to participate in the discussion. I believe that the lack of sleep that all of us IHA students suffer from is affecting our ability to learn in class.
I feel as though IHA has taught me to adapt to getting practically no sleep. At the beginning of each year, I often find it difficult to get back into the swing of things, not because of the work load, but because of the lack of sleep. However, once I hit January, if I start getting eight or more hours of sleep a night, I often feel more tired because I am simply not used to getting so much sleep in one night! I believe that it's not a matter of required sleep a night - it depends on the person. Isn't everyone different? I know that, personally, some of my friends require at least ten hours of sleep while others can run smoothly on four! If you asked me if I functioned better on less sleep in the eighth grade, I'd say that I needed my sleep. However, after almost four years at IHA I have my ideal amount of sleep and my bare minimum necessary to function. I believe that one can adapt to everyone's personal amount of required sleep.
ReplyDeleteHowever, on Christmas break, etc., having that extra amount of sleep tends to throw me for a loop. I'm more tired when I get more sleep but by the end of break when I'm used to it and I'm thrust back into nights with four hours of sleep, it really throws me for a loop. I catch colds, I feel fatigued, and it affects my ability to function. While there may not be a required amount of sleep that is common to every individual, I believe that every person does require a CONSISTENT amount of sleep. Whether it's four hours every night or eight, it's unhealthy when it starts to become six hours one night and two the next and nine the next.
I've decided to post now because this afternoon I took a four hour nap, and it is now 11:20pm and I am no longer tired. I usually try to get to sleep before eleven or I end up falling asleep in classes or turning into a cranky monster. Without at least five hours of sleep I am barely functional. Now I'm one of the lucky ones who puts her head down and can fall asleep instantly, but that can be problematic when I'm doing something boring like reading history articles, because I have no motivation to stay awake. For me, an all nighter is not possible nor plausible.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to the importance of sleep I have to disagree with Devin. I feel that quantity and quality are both vita factors in getting to healthy amount of sleep. You can have four hours of great sleep and feel the same as having 10 hours of half-sleep. Both are ineffective. You must have both the right amount of time allotted to sleeping, but also you must have the ability to turn off your mind and allow the sleep to consume you. Being an IHA senior obviously this is impossible; stressing over boys, friends, sports, colleges, homework. But in order to get a good sleep a think we should all work on tuning all of that out and just relaxing.
Agree, Disagree?
I agree with Kasey that the recommended 8 hours cannot always be perfect for everyone--it depends on the person. I usually end up getting 5-6 hours of sleep (on a good night), but tend to feel more awake if I get 4 hours than 8. Consistency is key--but I think an important outside factor influencing the amount of sleep we get is the caffeine addiction most IHA girls have. I know no matter how much sleep I get, if I don't have my coffee in the morning I cannot function. By 12 o'clock, I'll start to get a migraine and I'll be extremely unfocused in class. Through research I did for a journalism project sophomore year, I found that there was nothing unhealthy with drinking a cup or two of coffee during the day; the dependency is a problem. Too often I find myself pressing the buttons on my Keurig at 9:30 at night just so I can stay up and finish my essay due the next morning. Without caffeine, I don't think I would be able to function on 5 hours of sleep every night. Even though caffeine seems to be the panacea to lack of sleep, repeated nights of little sleep can only be cured by a long period of sleep. My dad knows exactly when I'm suffering from a lack of sleep towards the end of the week--I end up crankier, less caring of my eating and exercise habits, and less motivated. Overall, I think for our developing teenage body, it is definitely important to get a good amount of sleep--maybe 8 hours is a little idealistic, but at least a good 6 should be long enough to make it through a long day of school and club meetings or sports practices. If anything were to be changed about the school day, I would suggest breaking the week up--instead of a two day weekend, maybe have a one day break twice a week. I'm not sure as a teenager I'm too fond of that option myself, but it would give students an opportunity to catch up on sleep so they do not end up completely deadbeat by the time Friday rolls around.
ReplyDeleteLike Shaina, I had major sleeping problems as a kid, and went through numerous ways of trying to convince myself to fall asleep. For a while there, I treasured it, being able to fall asleep, once I worked out how and what sleeping methods worked for me, but now sleep mostly just seems more like an inconvenience, and it's really regrettable that it's come to that. Sure, we might all love a nap every once in a while, but mostly the idea of having to stop your day to sleep and refresh and, most importantly, not do work, sometimes seems like a waste of a few hours.
ReplyDeleteI think we've all just become accustomed to functioning on few hours of sleep, that it's become an adaptive thing, like seeing in the dark, or any other evolutionary aspect of daily life. Running on three, four, five hours of sleep has, at this point- and not to sound melodramatic- necessary for survival, at least as students. With the workload we get and then schedules we keep, I'm not sure getting five hours of sleep is worse than getting either, it's just an adaption that's necessary to have been made.
Unlike the "typical IHA girl" I have literally never stayed up later than 11:30 to do homework in my life. I would say every night I get between 8-9 hours of sleep and I'm able to fit in cross country, clubs, and all my homework. Although I do agree that working late at night is totally counter-productive for me, I don't think the real reason I get so much sleep is because of trouble functioning without it. I think it's more psychological. As a kid, I grew up in a family that went to bed really early. My parents are the epiphany of morning people and they are always asleep super early. My brothers and I were raised the same way. None of us like to stay out too late and at sleepovers, all of us are always the first asleep. The times that I have gotten 5-6 hours of sleep, I am definitely a little out of sorts, but I feel I don't function much differently. I think that the real reason I am so strict with my sleep pattern is just because it is what has always been drilled into me from an early age. Even now, with cross country, I am constantly reminded to get my "nine hours" by my coach. When I sleep less than that, I just feel like something is off. Of course, there are days where it is just impossible to get everything done and I don't get enough sleep. But, most often I like to stick to my usual schedule and feel I am happiest this way.
ReplyDeleteFor me, over-sleeping causes more problems than under-sleeping. If I’m tired, I can always grab a quick Starbucks or blast music to stay awake. If I devote large amounts of time to sleep, however, I wake up feeling more stressed out about losing time that I could have spent doing school work or catching up with friends.
ReplyDeleteWith a demanding course load and three club presidencies, I need to stay awake. Whenever I try to take a nap or go to bed early, my mind is still buzzing a thousand miles a minute about my packed to-do list. I can’t rest until my work is done. Out of necessity, I have developed the ability to operate efficiently on little to no amount of sleep. Although my six hours of sleep per night is incredibly unhealthy for most people, it works for me! Caffeine has become my best friend and working out gives me extra energy. Therefore, I find it incredibly easy to stay awake.
My sleeping schedule during holiday breaks and vacations is no different: I go to bed late and wake up early. This is simply how my body functions. Even though I promise myself that I will sleep in and catch up on lost hours rest, I find myself automatically waking up at 6 AM. Since old habits die hard, I’m under the impression that my messed up sleeping schedule will remain with me for most of my life. However, it works for me! Why fix something that isn’t broken?
ReplyDeleteLike everyone else, I need my sleep. I have to agree with Caroline that I rarely stay up past 11 doing homework. Not that I always get my homework done by 11 but I just can’t physically keep myself awake. I’ve tried everything to push myself to stay awake. As a child I drank an unhealthy amount of soda to the point where I am immune to the caffeine in it; since I hate coffee I am usually left with monster; however, energy drinks and too much caffeine in general can be dangerous. Last week within a day I drank two 24oz cans of monster to keep myself awake and concentrated. Needless to say this backfired; I was left shaking dizzy and unable to do my homework.
I am the complete opposite of Shana; I have to fight to stay awake during the day. It is only nine o’clock now and my eyelids are heavy and closing. Even eight hours of sleep doesn’t seem to cut it. In the mornings, I am still delirious in class like everyone else. I find it ten times harder to focus during first period than any other. I really like the rotating schedule for this reason; if I had the same class first period every day, my grades would definitely suffer.
The article stated the “drowsiness and fatigue cause more than 100,000 traffic accidents each year” and with the lack of sleep high school students get I am not surprised that they are more than half the crashes. I can’t tell you how many mornings I drive to school without even realizing I am driving. There have been numerous accounts where I finally park and question if I ran a red light, stopped at a stop sign or sped the whole way to school, but I can’t answer these questions because my mind was still asleep and not aware. Seeing people sleeping in the halls in the morning or falling asleep first period lets me know that I am not alone. Those same people were driving less than an hour ago and if they aren’t functioning now, chances are they weren’t when they were driving either.
As a senior, naps have become my best friend. I'm not quite sure how I made it through my first three years of high school without mastering the "power nap," a half an hour nap right when I get home from school to prepare myself for a long night ahead of homework, reading, and studying. As for getting enough sleep at night, I'm among the majority and rarely get more than four or five hours. I find, however, that when I'm on the lower end of that spectrum, three to four hours, I wake up not even tired in the slightest, probably because my body never fully went to sleep anyways and I wasn't waking up from any deep phase of sleep. Probably the worst mornings are those after the five/five and a half hour nights of sleep, because my body had just entered its phase of deepest sleep, finally slowing down my heart and mind, and I'm interrupting all of these processes by getting myself ready for another day. I've learned how to deal with the inevitable lack of sleep that comes along with being an IHA girl, and by far one of my most cherished times of the day is my amazing 2:30pm power nap.
ReplyDeleteSo far this year, I have definitely been affected by the lack of sleep I have been getting each night. On top of college apps and regular homework, I also have tennis every day after school. We have a match almost every day, and we are out playing until about 6 P.M. and I don't get home until about 7. By the time I eat dinner and get started on homework, it is about 8 o'clock. On average, I'd say I get about 4 hours of sleep a night. This lack of sleep has caused me to be sick on and off for the past three weeks, which makes my schedule even more stressful than it already was. When I don't get much sleep, I sometimes feel oddly wide-awake, but I realize later when I get a test back that I took on that day that I was not 100& functioning due to the endless amounts of silly errors I made on the test. Hopefully once tennis season and college apps are over I will be able to get more sleep, stop getting sick, and do better on tests.
ReplyDelete