Emily Coffin alludes to lack of sleep being the reason to her attempt to attend school on time.

With the hours of homework she has and time she goes to bed, it’s extremely hard for her to get up in the morning. Like most of us, high school and middle school students in the Wentzville area, we are to be at school at 7:15 meaning we have to get up around 5:30.

Sleep is the most needed asset for a teen to grow; it’s what we need yet somehow we rarely get any.

From the words of Nationwide Children’s Hospital on average, a teen gets around 7 to 7½ hours of sleep. The mandatory amount a teen should be getting is 9 to 9¼ hours of sleep. Somehow though we don’t seem to get that.

Due to activities like sports, after-school clubs, maybe even volunteering work, those things make you tired. Having to go home and do hours of homework and by the time they’re done, it’s around midnight and then you have things to do like cleaning and eating dinner then showering.

“Coming home from school I feel extremely tired all I want to do is go to bed,” Coffin said. 

Studies have shown there is a mid-afternoon slump that kicks in from around 1 to 3 p.m. During those hours it makes it extremely hard to stay up. Most students think they’ll just take a nap and then wake up, but instead most of the time they just end up falling asleep and not waking up till around 6 or 7 then these kids have hours of homework that’s expected in by the next day and essentially gets around five to seven hours of sleep.

As you get older, and as you get hormones and other body changes, your internal clock changes as well. Instead of going to sleep at 9, your body stays up till 11 and it’s harder to go to sleep meaning you’ll end up waking two hours later.

High schools around the nation have began to start school later. As of today, 10 percent of U.S. students start before 7:30 a.m., 35.8 percent start before 8 a.m., and 40.4 percent start before 8:30 a.m. according to The Detroit News. It’s only fair for high school students to get up later. We have more work, we have more things to do than elementary kids, and elementary kids are already conditioned to get up earlier due to having to get up so early for pre-school and day care.