Staying up until midnight trying to finish my homework is not ideal. The part that makes it even worse is that I only get five hours of sleep until I have to be back at school. When I wake up I hit the snooze button and it feels like I barely get to sleep any longer. I walk up the stairs to go to my first period barely awake. 

This is not rare for high school students. When we are going to school in-person we have to be at school by at least 7:15, so most students are waking up around five in the morning to start getting ready. It is even worse for students who have jobs or after-school activities, they can get home as late as 11. This leaves them little time to complete their homework and get a good night’s sleep. 

Teenagers need an average of 9 hours of sleep at night; high-school students barely average 7 hours of sleep each night assuming all they are doing the night before is homework, it can be worse if they also have after-school activities. During football season I have had to cheer at freshman games and then watch JV play so I could support my siblings, which usually meant I didn’t get home until 10. With the amount of homework our teachers assigned, I usually did not finish until midnight or later. On late start days, I feel more functional, even if I stay up late finishing homework I can sleep in a little later and I feel more prepared the next day, not like I could fall asleep at any moment. 

I think a solution to this problem would be having the school day start later. If we started between 8:45-9:30, students would get to sleep in much longer. 52.4% of students that answered our survey believe that it would be beneficial to start the school day later. 

“We would be able to perform better in school, we can stay up a bit later like our biological clock tells us, and we can have more time to wake up before we actually have to learn,” Vanessa Jennerjohn (‘24) said.

Students are also saying that it could benefit the teachers, not just students.

“A later start could also benefit the teachers as well… no one wants to deal with students that early in the morning,” Annalise Caul (‘23) said. “Students and teachers can sleep in and less students would miss the bus/sleep in, also any last minute work would be able to be finished in the extra time before school.”

An ideal solution would just be to start school later. Even doctors agree that teens are not lazy; they just think teens need more sleep.