A shrill, recurring rhythm emits from your cell phone; the glare of the snooze button is practically inviting, urging you to fall back into a harmonious slumber. After succumbing to the fatigue and adding 10 more minutes to your alarm, reality sets in, reminding you that time is fizzling away as the start of school is approaching.
School days are infamously early; Wilsonville High School mandates that students arrive no later than 8:25, the time that the first warning bell chimes. However, students struggle to fulfill this task, as sleeping can be difficult to manage in the presence of their busy schedules.
In a survey conducted pretraining sleep patterns of WVHS students, a total of 11 students participated. When asked how often they hesitated to get up in the morning, – or likely hit their snooze button – 45.5% of students answered, “most of the time”, while 36.4% answered, “sometimes.”
In addition to students indulging in the comfort of their snooze buttons, – or any other use of extended sleep – 8 out of the 11 students expressed a feeling of stress when getting ready in the morning, due to time pressures and the inability to fulfill morning rituals. One anonymous student, however, strategically sets aside at least a half hour so they “don’t feel stressed in the morning.”
Despite students’ efforts to prepare for the day in the morning, others utilize the night before to complete any tasks that may impede on their efforts to get to school on time. Michelle Bhilare, a freshman, typically gets her “outfit & bag ready, and [she] charge[s] [her] phone and chromebook.”
Although these tasks aren’t incredibly time consuming, they have the potential to evoke a sense of panic when getting ready in the morning.
According to the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC), it is recommended that adolescents ranging from 13-18 years old get 8-10 hours of sleep per night. However, according to their statistics, 72.7% of kids fail to meet sleeping standards on school nights.
While sleeping has become a topic of stress for some, many new implementations have been advised to those seeking out better sleep. Whether it’s substituting a type of technology with a book, or simply creating a consistent sleep schedule, students are capable of reinitiating the power of sleep.