Sleep Deprivation

                Falling asleep in lectures, hitting the snooze button multiple times in the mornings, the tell-all dark circles around your eyes…sound familiar? According to a Maas, Power Sleep Quiz, these are all symptoms of sleep deprivation. In AP Psych, we learned ALL about sleep and how much everyone should have. I personally think it's funny that people don't expect teenagers to be sleep deprived. I mean, think about it, everything we do is just meant to keep us awake.

                If we want to improve ourselves for college and juice up our college resumes, we take more AP classes and work hard to get good grades, especially if you are in your junior or beginning of senior year of high school. Teachers assign a whole lot of homework in AP classes and if you are taking more than one…good luck living life. Don't get me wrong, it does depend on the classes and if you choose to brush it off but it all eventually accumulates, creating a very long night of studying.

                Social network sites, television, and even music are all distracting to us. I will definitely admit that I spend way too much time on the computer when I have homework. I think the problem is that they are just so addicting to be on and so much more fun than doing the assigned homework. Even hormones in teenage bodies keep us awake longer.

                College kids are even worse. My sister is currently in college and I think she gets around four hours of sleep or less on a normal day. It's simply unhealthy, and then people wonder why college kids resort to drugs, a lot of them having an intended purpose to keep the student awake longer. Who knew that  trying to promote schoolwork also promoted drug use?

                I think that the simple fix to all of this is to tell teachers to limit the amount of homework they give out. If they don't assign as much, then students will get more sleep and actually pay attention in class. I'm sure the teachers would appreciate also the lack of dozing heads lying on desks.