Ever since quarantine started back in March I have slowly seen myself going to bed later and later, while waking up only minutes before class. This is something I would have never been able to do back in the olden days of school with in-class learning. Before I was waking up almost two hours before class started because of some time issues with family and siblings, but I never felt like I was getting a lack of sleep. Now I just feel drowsy and overall lethargic every day. This could of course be from a lack of sleep or because of being in quarantine for almost a year now, but I wanted to know if other students were having the same issue. So I went and messaged some Cal High students if they would be interested in participating. For the ones that were interested, I asked simple questions about sleep.
The specific questions were, do you think teens are getting more or less sleep since quarantine began? Do you believe that school has been giving more work and therefore kids are getting decreased amounts of sleep because of it? And would you say your sleep patterns are within the majority or the minority of your peer’s sleep patterns, a.k.a do you think your peers are getting more or less sleep than you?
Janelle Sanchez:
“I feel like people are at least getting the opportunity for more sleep. Whether they utilize it is up for debate.”
“I actually don’t feel like there is added work because we work for fewer hours in the day or at least it feels like less, going from 8:30 to 12:30 and a lot of my teachers have been pretty lenient, like my AP US history teacher Mr. Palmer lets us take notes in whatever form we want, it can be a one-pager, a skit, so honestly I don’t feel like the workload has been increased all that much if a all.”
“Well I wasn’t sleeping well before quarantine but getting more sleep is great. Like I usually don’t get up until 8 were beforehand I had to get up by 6:30 because I had to get ready and get to school. Rather than just throw on a hoodie and hop on my computer.”
Ruben Chavarria:
“Compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, I actually believe that teens are now getting MORE sleep than before.”
“I don’t think that schools have been giving an abnormal amount of homework. Even if they were, it would be completely understandable, considering that we now have less class time on average, than before the outbreak. Which I consider more time to work of homework.”
“I think that I’ve been getting even more sleep than before the pandemic. I constantly slept around 11 pm before COVID, and that has remained the same since. In 2019 I was used to getting up just before 6:30, to attend 0 period (7:20). The earliest school starts now is 8:30, which allows me to sleep about an hour and a half more than before.”
So as you can see my initial hypothesis was wrong. I originally believed that students without proper time restraints like having to plan on getting ready and getting to the bus on time, or getting to the school on time was leading to teens losing sleep because without those time restraints they do not have that sense of urgency to go to sleep a tad bit later or wake up a little bit sooner so they are able to catch said bus or ride to school. But when talking to these students I soon realized how wrong I was on the topic.
Bedroom photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red_bedroom.jpg ( 11 February 2007,
aimee castenell)
