Chasing Sleep SARAH SCHWARTZ ‘20
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s a high schooler, I am constantly chasing sleep. In my role as a CTTL Student Research Fellow, I was asked to come to a meeting with teachers and talk about the research data we had collected on the school’s new schedule. Our discussion soon turned to the topic of Time by Design, a feature of our new schedule. On select Wednesdays, about half of the ones occurring during the school year, classes start an hour later and students have the option of coming to school to participate in activities or sleep in and come to school an hour later than usual.1 Some teachers told me they didn’t understand giving kids this downtime if they didn’t take advantage by participating in the activities offered, and instead used the time to sleep in and come to school late. That is when I spoke up and shared something that I believe is my truth, and probably the truth of many high school students: I am chasing sleep. Sleep is a priority, yet too often for me, and other sleep-deprived teens, it falls to the wayside in favor of the never-ending to-do list, an attempt to balance our lives, without much of a margin for error. A never-ending sleep loss, being less efficient, staying up later to make up for it, and losing more sleep, has made a sleepdeprived insomniac of too many teens. While sleeping in one day during the school week doesn’t necessarily make up for inadequate nights of sleep other days, it does promote, if not ensure, one night of healthy sleep. Teenagers’ brains need 9-10 hours of sleep a night to function properly,2 yet few actually reach this mark due to their environment; the lack of sleep affects teens’ brains, academics, and lives, thus it is crucial to re-work our school day to cre-
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ate an environment in which students can sleep well and finish the race for sleep. Trying to balance school work, activities, sports, work, family, friends, self-care (genuine me-time), and the college application process means that searching for sleep gets lost in the process. During my sophomore year, my English teacher once asked my class what our ideal bedtime was. Expecting an absurdly late hour, he was surprised when I, along with the other sleep-deprived teens that filled my class, answered 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. It’s not that I don’t want to get a good night’s sleep – an early bedtime and 9 to 10 hours of sleep
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