Sleep? idk what that is
As we've entered the roller coaster that is the month of November, I've noticed that everyone seems to be dragging themselves into school, either super sleep-deprived or exhausted from every responsibility they have. More often than not, it's a mixture of both situations, and I wanted to touch on the concept of fatigue from my perspective.
I've always been less reliant on sleep than the average kid. I remember even in second grade, I would stay up til 10:00 with my brother trading Pokemon cards instead of getting 10+ hours of sleep. Nighttime has always been when I've felt most awake, weirdly enough. I've never had trouble staying up later than usual, and I think that I've gotten so used to the feeling of being tired in the morning that I've become sort of numb to it. I used to think that this was something to be proud of, but this year has changed the way I felt about my night-owl capabilities.
In my time at Uni, I started off subbie year going to bed around 11pm. My bedtime kept being pushed back with every year, as freshman and sophomore years, it became 12am/12:30am. Junior year I started having to go to bed at 1am, and senior year has been the worst yet, as I now typically go to bed around 2am every night. Starting junior year, I told myself I'd try to go to bed earlier - and I tried everything. I had alarms set for when I got home at night, such as "10:00pm Go shower"; "10:45pm Nightly hygiene routine"; and "11:00pm Go to bed". I tried the bedtime app that Apple released with iOS11, where it tracks how many hours of sleep you are (or should be) getting every night. I even tried meditating before I went to bed late as if I was going to get better quality sleep by doing so. Nothing really worked. I started realizing that the problem didn't lie in my prep before sleeping, but in why I couldn't go to bed in the first place.
I'm not at home a lot, and when I do get home, it's late. I mentioned this in my earlier blog post, but my dance nights - three out of five weekdays - last until 9:30. I typically come home around 9:45 or 10:00, and I eat dinner/a snack and shower. By the time I finish my nightly routine, it's 11:00 - which is when I start my homework, check my emails, work on college apps, and/or start studying for tests, usually not finishing until 2. However, I know for a fact that I am not the only person that is going through this shift of night schedules - every one of my friends has been sleep-deprived, especially during the past two weeks and it's just really funky and quite sad. I often wonder how much of a damper the competitive atmosphere of Uni has put on our lack of sleep. I've had conversations with teachers recently about how they've noticed everyone dragging themselves from class to class, clearly not having enough energy for their classwork, extracurriculars, and homework. I've also heard someone say, "I can't see the light at the end of this tunnel" in response to how stressful the past few weeks have been, and that made me really think about how our minds have been programmed by our environment to put grades over our health (whether that's physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, etc).
I honestly don't have a solution to our school-wide problem of sleep deprivation, but I have learned a few things that I constantly try to remind myself:
- It's okay to not be able to do everything. We only have 24 hours in a day, so prioritizing, organizing, and being responsible is ~important~.
- If you need to take a mental health break, do it!!! I often sit and just listen to music to calm myself down. Also food???? SO good. Snack breaks are the best breaks
- Whenever you can, maybe skip an hour of phone time and instead add that hour to sleep time
- 20 min power naps might be the move for you, as long as it doesn't go longer than that so you don't mess with REM sleep
- We're almost done! We have 6 weeks left of the semester... Thanksgiving break is this month and then a few more weeks and then winter break!! We got this<3
I've always been less reliant on sleep than the average kid. I remember even in second grade, I would stay up til 10:00 with my brother trading Pokemon cards instead of getting 10+ hours of sleep. Nighttime has always been when I've felt most awake, weirdly enough. I've never had trouble staying up later than usual, and I think that I've gotten so used to the feeling of being tired in the morning that I've become sort of numb to it. I used to think that this was something to be proud of, but this year has changed the way I felt about my night-owl capabilities.
In my time at Uni, I started off subbie year going to bed around 11pm. My bedtime kept being pushed back with every year, as freshman and sophomore years, it became 12am/12:30am. Junior year I started having to go to bed at 1am, and senior year has been the worst yet, as I now typically go to bed around 2am every night. Starting junior year, I told myself I'd try to go to bed earlier - and I tried everything. I had alarms set for when I got home at night, such as "10:00pm Go shower"; "10:45pm Nightly hygiene routine"; and "11:00pm Go to bed". I tried the bedtime app that Apple released with iOS11, where it tracks how many hours of sleep you are (or should be) getting every night. I even tried meditating before I went to bed late as if I was going to get better quality sleep by doing so. Nothing really worked. I started realizing that the problem didn't lie in my prep before sleeping, but in why I couldn't go to bed in the first place.
I'm not at home a lot, and when I do get home, it's late. I mentioned this in my earlier blog post, but my dance nights - three out of five weekdays - last until 9:30. I typically come home around 9:45 or 10:00, and I eat dinner/a snack and shower. By the time I finish my nightly routine, it's 11:00 - which is when I start my homework, check my emails, work on college apps, and/or start studying for tests, usually not finishing until 2. However, I know for a fact that I am not the only person that is going through this shift of night schedules - every one of my friends has been sleep-deprived, especially during the past two weeks and it's just really funky and quite sad. I often wonder how much of a damper the competitive atmosphere of Uni has put on our lack of sleep. I've had conversations with teachers recently about how they've noticed everyone dragging themselves from class to class, clearly not having enough energy for their classwork, extracurriculars, and homework. I've also heard someone say, "I can't see the light at the end of this tunnel" in response to how stressful the past few weeks have been, and that made me really think about how our minds have been programmed by our environment to put grades over our health (whether that's physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, etc).
I honestly don't have a solution to our school-wide problem of sleep deprivation, but I have learned a few things that I constantly try to remind myself:
- It's okay to not be able to do everything. We only have 24 hours in a day, so prioritizing, organizing, and being responsible is ~important~.
- If you need to take a mental health break, do it!!! I often sit and just listen to music to calm myself down. Also food???? SO good. Snack breaks are the best breaks
- Whenever you can, maybe skip an hour of phone time and instead add that hour to sleep time
- 20 min power naps might be the move for you, as long as it doesn't go longer than that so you don't mess with REM sleep
- We're almost done! We have 6 weeks left of the semester... Thanksgiving break is this month and then a few more weeks and then winter break!! We got this<3
Honestly, I feel like if the TEACHERS are noticing that at least 60% of us are going full-blown zombie, it should be a tip-off that there might be something wrong.
ReplyDeleteI started subbie year going to bed around 10:00, because I was still a stupid child at that time, and now I look back at my younger self with this burning anger because she did not know how good she had it!
Thanks for the encouragement by the way! 6 more weeks! 6 more weeks! 6 more weeks!
I've been dealing with not getting enough sleep all my years of high school as well. I just can't fall asleep sometimes. For example, if I have an important exam the next day, it's hard for me to just close my eyes and sleep. I keep on thinking about what I have the next day, and the next thing I know it's past midnight. A horrible habit that I developed is going on my phone right before I sleep. I get trapped in the realm of YouTube and Instagram, and I end up sleeping an hour later. Hopefully, especially after college apps are over, more sleep will come our way.
ReplyDeleteI've also been going to sleep at times that are ridiculously late for me. I'm actually a morning person so going to sleep any time after 11 is not gonna work out for me, but since junior year started, I've been going to sleep at 12 am or later every night and it's made it impossible for me to function at school. I think your advice about giving up one hour of sleep every night to get a little more sleep is actually really good advice. A lot of the time, I'm really tired but I find myself staying up really late because I start watching a couple videos on Youtube, and then I can't stop watching.
ReplyDeleteLately, I've been soooo tired. I'm getting caught in my annual fall slump, where I begin sleeping super late (due to workload, procrastination, etc.) and getting extremely tired. Sleeping at 1 am is quite an unhealthy practice. Not only am I tired throughout the day, I also accidentally fall asleep, sometimes in class (shhhh). In order to make up for this lost time, I need to stay up later to more work. The struggle is real.
ReplyDeleteI used to be the kind of person that thought that 10:00 pm was late. Now, I'll be happy if I sleep at midnight. I think it's just the need to get everything done before the next school day really stresses me out, especially if I have major assignment or a test the next day. Getting stressed makes more awake, hence, that's why I always stay up late now. I feel like hours of sleep that I've missing are catching up to me though because for the past two days, I've been taking five hour long naps right in the middle of the day lol.
ReplyDeleteThank you for addressing a very important topic at Uni. What sucks is the spiral the relatively sleepless nights cause. You get tired, you perform worse, you have to stay up later to catch up, repeat. It's REALLY nice that some teachers are noticing that we're teenagers with lives and extracurriculars and that we need 8 hours of sleep. I hope you find something that works well for you so you can get the amount of sleep and energy you need.
ReplyDeleteTBH I've never felt as much relief as when I sent in my last college app. I was extremely sleep deprived, had been writing essays non-stop for three days straight, hadn't gone to sleep before 1 am in days, and had gotten extensions on basically all of my school work. Even with the build up of work and exhaustion I felt as though this was the only thing that mattered. In many ways that is true, but I was so ready to rest only to remember that i have hours more of work yet to devote in this week to writing and math. All of this is to say that I'm so tired.
ReplyDeleteI think that I'm more dependent on sleep than the average person because I can get 7 or 8 hours of sleep a night and still be exhausted. Sometime I feel guilty about complaining about being tired although I'm usually in bed by 11 or 12 but somehow I'm still usually exhausted. Honestly I've wanted Uni to implement a late start day for so long so that students can feel well rested at least once a week.
ReplyDeleteWow I still can't believe I used to go to sleep before 10 during Subbie year. Now doing that seems to be impossible for me. The problem is I don't have that much work, I just have an insane procrastination problem, which makes all the work I have appear more daunting and stress me out more. I like your tips you added at the end; I would definitely rather have an extra hour of sleep than be on my phone, but when its 1AM and I can't stop scrolling through Reddit, it's easier said than done.
ReplyDeleteSleep deprivation is a pretty strange problem in High schools, you would think that if every teacher gave "30 minutes" of homework, you would have time to finish it all. However various other factors come into play, such as extracurriculars, social and personal habits, or just laziness. People need not burden themselves with too much that they cannot handle.
ReplyDelete