Sleep, the refuge of the masses, a place where every human will spend one third of their life happily snoozing away. Yet, for the majority of teenagers this becomes a luxury due to school and plentiful extracurricular activities.
According to psychology teacher Mrs. Cathy Dobkin, students need balance between activities and sleep.
“Extracurricular activities and athletics can dominate our schedules,” Dobkin said. “I think teens in general have a problem with sleep deprivation.”
In addition, St. Luke’s Hospital Sleep Specialist Dr. Hasan Ahmed says individuals have their own sleep cycle. An insufficient amount of sleep can lead to difficulty getting up in the morning and even hitting the snooze button excessive times after the alarm sounds. It can be difficult to concentrate, your alertness goes down, and all daytime activities are affected. He stressed there should be a sense of balance in your life.
To provide adequate sleep for growth and healing, a teenager requires between eight and 10 hours of sleep every night. Dobkin said there is research showing teenage circadian rhythms, or human biological clocks, to be different from other individuals.
“When adults are beginning to feel sleepy around 9, students are just starting to feel drowsy around 11,” Dobkin said. “So if 11 is the bedtime, to make it to school at 7:35 is not giving you the sleep that you really need. There have been school districts that have embraced what sleep researchers have found and adjusted to a later start time.”
Generally, students have hours of homework in addition to extracurricular activities. There is only so much that can be accomplished in a single day and an excessive schedule leads to a struggle during first block.
“I had a first block class last year, and it was really hard to motivate them to discuss things in class, because people just wanted to sit there,” Dobkin said.  “The interaction is much greater in my afternoon classes than the early morning classes.  Even my third block class is still pretty sleepy.”
While school work can demand a lot of student time, sleep remains an essential key to success for student athletes.
“Sleep is incredibly important from an athletic standpoint because while you are asleep that is the period of the day where your body is truly recovering and repairing any damage you might have suffered during a game,” biology teacher Mr. Adam Bergeron said.  “When I say damage, you have to keep in mind that muscle soreness is still damage to the body that needs to be repaired. If you are not sleeping and allowing the repair to take place, you might as well not have done the work out because you are not going to benefit maximally from the workout.”
According to Ahmed, televisions, cell phones and all screens can lead to difficulty falling asleep.  The bed must be associated with sleep only.  If homework is completed on the bed, a person’s mind no longer associates the bed specifically with sleep. Overall, Ahmed believes that sleep is crucial to success.
Furthermore, sleep is a crucial factor in the learning process of teenagers.  Students trying to create a balance between sleep and school are set up for success.
“When you are cramming for a test the night before trying to get all of that information in, you are not sleeping. Your brain does not have an opportunity to process and learn the information,” Bergeron said.  “You are just trying to store and compress information for the short term.  As educators and students, we want knowledge for the long term and not the short term, so sleep is extremely important.”