A topic that is often debated my many productive minds, be it college students or working class individuals. Owls and Larks, that is, late night workers and early risers.
Sleep cycles affect our daily life more than we’d care to admit and society’s lack of leniency for individualistic characters and functioning of our brains lead many people in roadblocks in their lives; seeming stand-stills that are root to many more problems.
As it stands, I’m an Owl, as most techies are. Living until now, it has never really been a problem but coming into university. The premise of what should be a flexible schedule is, to say the least, less than flexible for owls. A perfect example is, one of my courses (required course for my degree; at that) only has relatively early classes. If I were to live on campus or relatively close, it wouldn’t be that big of a problem; but I don’t I travel 2 hours to school and 2+ hours from school as the later it gets the harder it is to find public transportation.
Being a late worker I prefer classes in the evenings going on night, even night classes would be good as I tend to be up and running, so to speak, at around midday. Anything before that and I’m not attentive, I retain less and overall perform worse. Hours after dark, especially midnight onwards until about 5 when the sun starts to rise, these are my most productive and attentive hours. I get the most done in these times.
As this has become a prominent issue with my schedule I have been doing some research into the topic and one very interesting post, sharing somewhat similar views to mine; or well taking an objective point of view that points out the lack of infrastructure for ‘owls’ in society.
Night Owls and Early Risers Have Different Brain Structures
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michael-j-breus/night-owl-sleep_b_4276411.html
The article points out some risks people who stay up late might encounter; such as depression, less than healthy diets, and substance abuse. This points to me as an individual somewhat, I often overthink and this sometimes leads to depression periods and I do choose a less healthful diet. As for the substance abuse, I drink a lot when I do drink, but I don’t drink often nor do I to drunk. However, this isn’t really the part of the post that piqued my interest, it’s the part that states that some studies show a higher level of productivity from late workers as opposed to the in-betweens and the early risers. The studies also show higher stamina to carryout out task through our preferred period of work, and also that we have greater reasoning and analytical abilities than our earlier-to-bed counterparts
“Other research has shown that night owls display greater reasoning and analytical abilities than their earlier-to-bed counterparts. Stay-up-late types, according to research, achieve greater financial and professional success on average than those people with earlier bedtimes and wake times”
These recent discoveries, hopefully, will influence a change in some aspects of society to account for a wider variety of productive minds. Which will facilitate and different classifications of sleep cycles.
Well, my take on it. I want late classes. That’s all…
But really, I would love to see accommodations be made to suit everyone especially with this promise of “flexible time-tables” and “choose your classes to suit you”. It all well and good to sell a statement but delivering on it is key.
Marionette__
