Essay #3 Rough Draft

Essay #3

          Rise and shine! As most parents, or alarm clocks try and wake there heavily sleeping adolescents before the sun rises on the new day. Only to find that much is difficult. Teenagers waking early for school usually spend later hours in their routine of sports, studying, extracurricular activities, or doing assignments for other classes. After dragging themselves early out of there sheets like a mindless zombie they go to school where they might constantly struggle in paying attention to there instructor, and accidently falling in and out of sleep in class. Where the instructor themselves would be frustrated with the student, and believing that it was laziness, or rudeness that drive them to slumber while they teach. Is it really the teens fault? Might an adjustment to their daily schedules provide beneficial results? I believe so.

          While I may be just another freshmen in college, I know what it’s like to be waking after a long night of finishing homework, and causing frustration to my parents, or teachers (or both) trying to keep my eyes focused. I’ve however done some research on why it almost always seems to be a constant struggle to wake early in the hours of the morning. I found that psychologists believe that teens are “biologically driven…to these sleep-in, stay-up-late schedules” (Insert source). Also as they go through the long road of puberty they are more prone to develop sleep deficiencies that get them deeper into something I like to call sleep debt. Teenagers require more sleep than adults with teenagers needing roughly 9 hours of nightly sleep, compared to the general 7-8 hours for adults. With their busy schedules, the time the teen usually go to sleep to when the wake up does not normally reach this necessary amount.  This impacts there learning and academic performance as well as their behavior, and mood throughout the day. It may overall cause a risk to one’s own health by developing unhealthy addictions, and possible depression. With early routines shifted by at least half an hour could make a powerful difference.

          Say normally a high schooler starts school around 8 a.m., but suddenly there was a 25 minute delay in the school start time. This happened in the state of Rhode Island where researchers studied 197 high-school students, and how the change in time would affect the adolescents sleep habits. The results were outstanding. There was about a 79% decrease of students sleeping less than 7 hours, and a 16% to 57% increase in students sleeping 8 or more hours nightly. The students experienced significant improvements to there emotional and physical health, and their performance at school during the day.