By Priscilla Le
Sleep. What an imaginative notion. It’s become a known fact—most high schoolers do not get enough sleep.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that teenagers, aged 13-18 years old, get eight to ten hours of sleep. But look around in your classes. Do the incessant yawns, heavy eyelids and the student snoring in the corner of the room indicate that your classmates are getting enough sleep? Nope. And as someone who falls behind that recommendation substantially, with an average of five to six hours per night, I decided to do a little experiment.
Is more sleep really worth it? Is it feasible and is it sustainable?
Although I couldn’t quite reach the eight to ten hour mark, I went for the next best thing; five rapid eye movement (REM) cycles.
REM cycles involve alternations between light and deep sleep with one full cycle lasting an hour and a half. It is recommended to have at least five to six complete sleep cycles for a good night’s rest.
So, I set out on a mission. Get at least seven and a half hours of sleep per night for a week. Easy, right? Sure. But add on the fact that I have five APs, a job, extracurriculars and a social life, and the prospect becomes easier said than done.
Day one. Tuesday, Nov. 1
My experiment started on Tuesday when I hit my first roadblock. I took a nap. This was most likely caused by my whack sleeping schedule established before I started this trial or the result of a massive sugar crash from all the Halloween candy I ate. Either way, although it was only an hour, spanning from 5:15-6:20 pm, I had trouble falling asleep when it actually came time to power down.
Not only was sleeplessness an issue, increased stress from extracurricular activities made me wish that I didn’t commit to this experiment so I could just stay up. For Model United Nations (MUN), I had two position papers, which are research papers, due Friday. And I hadn’t even started on any research yet!
To add salt to the wound, I also had tests in AP Economics and AP Psychology and an AP Calculus BC (AP Calc) quiz the next day.
This was going to be a week full of compromise and flexibility, one I would be forcing myself down in the name of science.
The only upside was that I woke up easily in the morning, although got out of bed begrudgingly.
Day two. Wednesday, Nov. 2
On Wednesday, I ran into another problem. For AP English Literature and Composition (AP Lit), I had to read around sixty pages of my Seminar Novel Reading (SNR) book by Friday morning. I didn’t have any time to do it today because of all of my other homework, especially because I got a late start since I had work. And on Thursday, I had an event spanning 6-9 pm, leaving only 3 hours for all of my homework then.
Usually, I would just stay up an extra hour and a half on Thursday to finish the assignment, but to complete the experiment, I couldn’t. By the time I would get home and finish my night routine, it would be 10 pm, my bedtime.
So, I had to adapt, planning on using Thursday to find time to read in other classes, at lunch or after school. In order to prioritize this assignment, I had to forget about all of my other homework. This was only achievable since I finished most of the week’s homework today. But homework wasn’t the only thing that I had to worry about. Remember those position papers? Yup, still due Friday night at 11:59 pm. The only time I would have for them was after work on Friday.
On day two, I learned a valuable lesson: prepare for the worst, especially when you have a 10 o’clock bedtime.
Day three. Thursday, Nov. 3
All I had prepared for was going to go down today. I had three hours to read sixty pages and finish my AP Lit assignment. And I started, making a valiant effort—until the eye drooping began. Before long, I fell asleep, only reading an amount that I am too ashamed to share.
I didn’t finish my assignment like I was hoping to before the event. And just as I had predicted, the second I finished getting ready for bed, the clock struck 10 o’clock.
But I did get a pretty good night of sleep.
Day four. Friday, Nov. 4
In the morning, I had one goal and one goal only. Drop AP Lit. Just kidding. I finished my homework in the morning and during zero period, but the experience was very stressful. Even though I would have gotten less sleep, doing homework well into the night not only reduces stress for me in the long run, but also takes advantage of the time that I am most productive since I am a night owl.
However, the effects of constantly sufficient sleep were felt; I was feeling rested and good…until I got home from work.
It was finally time to work on my position papers. I started at 6 pm, researching and writing them with breaks in between until 11:00 pm, where I then submitted the papers at 11:20 pm after finishing my citations.
Surprisingly, I wasn’t feeling much stress while writing them, since I was keeping to the time stamps I set out. I concluded my day and went to bed at midnight.
Day five. Saturday, Nov. 5
Check the date again. The November SAT was administered today. But no, I did not take it. I actually didn’t even register for it. With the schedule I was keeping, I wouldn’t have succumbed to such masochistic tendencies. However, I woke up at 7:30 on a Saturday morning, which honestly is masochistic in its own right.
Who wakes up at 7:30 am on a SATURDAY morning?! Let me rephrase that. What type of sane person wakes up at 7:30 am on a Saturday morning? Crickets, as there should be.
I compensated by taking a three-hour nap. Then I did homework and went out to eat with friends, eventually going to sleep at midnight.
Day six. Sunday, Nov. 6
On Sunday, I didn’t want to get up, but I did. After coming home from church, I took a nap and continued to do my homework.
I also tried to sleep at 11 pm so I could get nine hours of sleep from daylight savings, but I slept at 11:30 pm because I was playing a game on my phone. My phone addiction is as bad as anyone’s (Dopamine addiction is crazy, y’all…stay safe).
Day seven. Monday, Nov. 7 (THE LAST DAY)
Like every other day, I began my final trial day by not wanting to get out of bed. However, I did feel pretty awake.
I crushed my AP Calc Test, ran after-school errands and did homework, savoring my final night of rest.
Takeaways
I’m pretty glad that this experiment is over. It’s feasible, but not sustainable in the long run with all that I have to juggle. Some days a strict bedtime is reasonable and some days it crunches me for time. And it’s not because I don’t know how to time manage—in times when I only have to focus on homework, I usually finish by 6 pm. Instead, it’s the extracurriculars and outside commitments that I have that make a flexible schedule work for me.
Having a set bedtime at ten restricts that flexibility and doesn’t take advantage of my skyrocketed productivity between 10 pm and midnight. These disadvantages don’t serve as the only drawbacks to having seven and a half hours of sleep, however.
More sleep meant less time available to do assignments which increased stress. Although I was able to keep up with my courseload, there was unnecessary stress that would have been avoided if I had another hour to work instead of lying in bed, where I had a hard time falling asleep anyways.
But despite all of the downfalls I experienced, I do appreciate this experiment. It gave me an excuse to finally get the sleep that I needed amidst my chaotic and sleep-deprived days. Additionally, I was much more awake in the morning, letting me feel alive rather than like a brain-dead zombie. And honestly, I felt much more prepared and present in my classes and for activities after school.
Therefore, I think that a combination of five to six and seven-hour nights would be most useful for me in the long run. This would give me the liberty to shift around different activities to best fit my schedule but also gain much-needed rest.
And these results might be different for everyone else. You might require nine hours of sleep a night, or survive just fine with three. But despite the variation in sleep requirements the majority of people fail to meet their own.
And for an experiment to be the sole reason why I finally got adequate sleep is revealing; I only got sleep because I forced myself to. So, for barons who are also juggling 20 extracurricular activities and several AP classes—or just don’t get enough sleep—I am worried. Would you also need to be forced to have a bedtime to actually stick to it? Is sleeping at a reasonable hour even a goal you have?
Even though I said a bedtime wasn’t sustainable for me in the long run, being sleep-deprived 24/7 won’t do any good either. It’s the balance between working hard and knowing when to rest that forms a superb student and a healthy teenager.
So now, I pass the challenge onto you, albeit a tamer version. Get two nights of good sleep (in a row) during the school week. Sure, it might be an experiment that finally forces you to sleep. But I hope it’ll give you a sample of what you’re missing to finally convince you that you do need to rest.
I understand it’s harder said than done when your workload is demanding—you saw me live through that during my experiment. But it’s also important to prioritize self-care, so I hope that setting the bar low will give you the proper push you need to get this done.
You’ve got nothing to lose…and who knows? As a result of your own experiment, you might understand the value of a good night’s rest, and perhaps multiple times per week in the future go to sleep at a reasonable hour, not out of compulsion from an experiment, but just because it is time to hit the hay.
