Sleep or School?

Is there any better feeling when you wake up in the middle of the night and you look at the time and know you have about 3 hours more of sleep? For many teenagers, including myself, this is the case.

Teenagers are stuck all afternoon in academic clubs, afterschool activities and/or doing homework. When we get home we start doing our homework but the majority of the times we have too many so we end up going to bed really late at night. Not only do all teens love to sleep but we also really need it. I have heard some people say that as you grow up you need less sleep. However, you need the most sleep in your teenage years. Lack of sleep limits your ability to learn and to concentrate.

This really affects teenagers since in school we really need that ability to concentrate and solve problems. Specially when we are getting close to college applications and need to improve our GPA. Teenagers have a lot of pressure and mostly nowadays to get into college so we are always trying to exceed our expectations. We need these abilities now more than ever; this is why we need more sleep. When I enter my first period class I mostly see my classmates yawning and daydreaming.

When we have to wake up so early and we are so tired we cant do our best the next day in school. Even if we try our best, it is really hard for us to maintain full focus when we didn’t get enough rest. Lack of sleep in many teenagers may also lead to aggression and inappropriate behavior. This may be one of the reasons why some students get into fights or make bad decisions in school. They are not thinking clearly and make some choices that they later regret. Of course not getting enough sleep isn’t directly correlated to getting into fights but I do believe that not getting enough rest may affect in some way your decision-making.

The question many of you should be asking yourselves is then why does school start so early? Why wouldn’t school start later if students can do better? Making school start a little bit later wont solve all the problems the school has but I think that it could help the students perform better and help them think clearly to make good choices. Studies from Brown University say that running schools at appropriate hours helps the student get more sleep and therefore they have better health and perform better academically in school. I think that many schools have considered making these changes, however they are scared what effects it will have or they will look bad. Sleep has become a major issue in our lives.It is one of the main aspects that will define our performance in school and work as well.It is important to realize that sleeping well is necessary for the well being of a teenager.

Source: “Teens and Sleep.” Sleep for Teenagers 2. National Sleep Foundation, n.d. Web. 19 Nov.

2014. .