Andrew Shaw Richel Burkey-Harris College Writing 1 2 October 2017 Proposal Essay It’s seven in the morning when the backup alarm goes off. You still need to get something to eat and take a shower. You barely have enough time to do one. Which one do you chose? You need to be in class by seven thirty or risk getting detention. Even though this panic feeling of being late and tired is all too familiar to most teenagers if not all, many schools still have starting times before seven thirty and don’t realize that it greatly affects the amount of sleep a teenager gets resulting in lower test scores. Although getting enough sleep may not seem like that hard of a task, medical research shows that teens who regularly get too little sleep are …show more content…
Numerous studies, including those published by Elizabeth Baroni and her colleagues in 2004 and by Fred Danner and Barbara Phillips in 2008, have found that fewer hours of sleep is a direct result of earlier start times, as teenagers may not fully atone for earlier starting times with earlier bedtimes. Activities such as sports and work, as well as family and social schedules, may make it difficult for students to adjust to the earlier bedtime. Another thing is that the beginning of puberty brings two factors that can make this adjustment particularly difficult for teenagers: an increase in the amount of sleep needed and a change in the natural timing of the sleep cycle. Hormonal changes, in particular, the release of melatonin which changes the natural everyday rhythm of teenagers, making it more difficult for them to fall asleep early at night. Lack of sleep, as a result, can interfere with learning. A 1996 survey of research studies found considerable data that less sleep is correlated with a decrease in cognitive performance, both in a laboratory setting and through self reported sleep habits. Researchers have likewise reported a negative correlation between self reported hours of sleep and school grades among both middle and high school