Amidst academic workloads and extracurriculars, it's no suprise that more sleep is desired across all grades. Instead of accepting that we live in a world where a healthy amount of sleep is unachievable, we must work to incorporate the prioritization of sleep into school and workplaces. It has become socially acceptable for people to go through day-to-day life running on less sleep than is healthy. However, the culture cycle of sleep deprivation should not be normalized, as it has so many more negative impacts than feeling tired. These effects are especially felt among BHS students.
“I feel like it would be nice to get a bit more (sleep), but I just have a lot of stuff to do with school and cross country,” Tommy Fisher, a Berkeley High School freshman, said. He sleeps for around eight hours each night, but on weekends he sleeps for an hour and a half longer. He seemed resigned to the fact that more sleep simply couldn’t happen right now with such a busy schedule. Tommy also shared that without adequate sleep, he feels like he “can’t focus as much."
“By the end of the day during school, I'm always really tired, and after school, when I have soccer practice late at night, I'm also really tired and don't have a lot of energy,” said Ella Cody, a BHS sophomore. “If I got more sleep, I'd probably have more energy and be able to focus in my classes better.” She gets about 7 ½ to 8 hours of sleep each night, but would be happier with more.
“I usually get a good amount of sleep so that I'm not too tired and I can like actually get through the day,” Eleanor Heslop, a BHS junior, said, “On days where I have a lot of extracurriculars, I'm way more tired, and I have to go to bed earlier because I'm so tired … (but) I have to go to bed later to do my homework. So it's a toxic cycle.” Last night Heslop got less than seven hours of sleep due to an excess of schoolwork and was not satisfied with that amount of sleep.
Now in his senior year at BHS, Evan Cobigo has become a veteran of balancing sleep, but that doesn’t mean he’s satisfied with the amount of sleep he gets on average. “I have better performance when I sleep more … for basically everything,” he said. Cobigo said that schoolwork and college applications take away from his sleep, as well as being on his phone. Cobigo often goes to bed on the later side, anywhere between 11:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m., waking up past the start of school.
