Zzzz....Wait What?

        Exhaustion. This is possibly the one inescapable thing for teenagers in high school. While lack of sleep tends to be what most blame this demon on, I have found that sleeping is not the only thing that cures my drooping eyelids. Studies done by Mayo Clinic show that school age children (this including the high school age group) need ten to eleven hours of sleep every night. But if you take a survey of how many hours of sleep everyone gets a night in my high school, the average wouldn't be anywhere near ten to eleven hours. Me, I consider myself lucky if I get anywhere near eight hours of sleep on a school night.
        When I trudge sleepily into my first class of the day, I hear "I am so tired" or the same sentiment from at least four different people in just the first class period. And I have to admit that I catch myself complaining of the same thing to my friends on several occasions. For the most part, I will be so exhausted I feel like I won't be able to function for the first hour and a half or so after I wake up. After that dreary period of time, I find myself waking up and feeling more capable to face the day ahead of me.
        On days like I had today in which I only got around six hours of sleep the night before with a long and boring day of school, I get home and all I want to do is take a nap. But of course there's homework to do and tests to study for. So instead of catching up on some sleep or doing homework, I just spend my time doing nothing and thinking about my day. While doing this, I realize that I wasn't this exhausted all day. Sure I was tired when I first woke up, but first hour we played games the entire class, and I was wide awake. Then for the next few classes I felt myself drifting into a dream like state for a few minutes. In my sixth hour math class, my teacher said something that made the entire class erupt in laughter. I felt bright and awake for the rest of the class.
       I think that I have found that sleep is not the only thing that is directly related to how tired you are. I don't know if this applies to everyone, but to me, it seems that if something fun, exciting, or slightly different happens, it flows through my like adrenaline, and it works as a boost of energy. ...then I burn through that energy again (how fast depending on how sleep deprived I am), and then I need something new to happen.
       My point is that if during these last few months of school that seem to be the absolute most tiring, if teachers would take the extra minute or two to do something fun or interesting at the beginning of class, they may see a little more energy from their exhausted students. My suggestion: maybe play some music while students are filing into the classroom. Music is what I turn to when I need to change my mood or indulge my current mood. A good song has more power than one may think...but my thoughts on that are for another blog entry in the future. Maybe it's just me...but I know that when the school played "Dancing Queen" by Abba throughout the whole school, the energy in my U.S. History classroom couldn't be contained.

       So to all of those teachers out there...consider it. Wake up your students so they don't feel like I do in the picture above which I titled "School Daze".