Trying to balance school, sports, work and anything else in a day is not an easy task. I find myself fighting with this every day of the school year.
On top of this, the lack of sleep I get every night does not help this problem at all. According to the CDC, “teenagers aged 13-18 years should sleep 8-10 hours per 24 hours.” As a 16-year-old, I can confirm that I do not get 8-10 hours of sleep each night.
Let’s start off with sports. This past school year for example, I swam for my high school. Every morning before school we would have practice from 5:15 to 6:15, requiring me to get up at 4:45 a.m. If you do the math, to get the minimum amount of sleep that I should get, I would have to go to bed at 8:15 p.m. But how is this possible with school work and softball practice the night before?
On a regular day, with no swim practice, I wake up around 6:30 a.m. to start getting ready for school, which officially starts at 8:20 a.m. This bell schedule does not allow a tennager to be able to have a healthy sleep schedule.
Every night, I think to myself, “how am I supposed to get to sleep before midnight with all of this school work I have along with softball practice?”
There are numerous times I cry during the school year because I am stressed out about school work and on top of that, upset because I am so physically and mentally drained. I do not get enough sleep to be able to do everything I do each day.
Even If I got to sleep by midnight, that’s six hours of sleep, which according to the CDC, is just not enough.
A study from Health Line states, “Research has found that 73 percent of high school students regularly do not get a healthy amount of sleep.”
If they keep the bell schedule as is, the teachers need to rethink the workload. I strongly believe that most teachers think we have no life outside their class and forget we have five other classes to worry about as well. It’s as if they think we have all the time in the world to work on things for their one class. That’s in addition to the sports many students play and the jobs many students work.
When I lived in Florida, high school and middle school started around 8 a.m. and elementary school started around 9 a.m.. How is this fair? The children who have no homework, no jobs, and usually no sports get to sleep, which they don’t even do in the first place.
Thomas Dekker famously said, “Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.”
Sleep is so important to our developing minds and bodies, and school starting early does not allow for adequate sleep. To be able to have good mental health and be involved in much more than just school, us teens deserve sleep.
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