An odd sort of ringing jerks you from your dreams. Having only gone to bed four hours ago, it was quite a short night. As you become accustomed to your surroundings, you notice that it’s 6:45, and still dark outside, but you’re awake and need to be ready for a long day, followed by another sleepless night.

Whether you’re a freshman or a senior ready for their college years, the typical stress of school work and lack of time to get assignments done always gets under your skin.

For Sarah Moenning ’19, homework is a large task. Having the hassle of doing her high school work, and also any work from her Kirkwood classes takes a lot of time. If you add up all the time Moenning spends doing her homework, it would add up to around four hours a night. ¨Last night I went to bed at 12:30 and still had to wake up at 6:30 because class starts at 7:30 for Kirkwood,¨ Moenning said.

On average, most teens need nine and a half hours of sleep per night, according to a sleep study done by the Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Times haven’t changed much, and adolescents are still struggling finding time to sleep.

¨Yeah so I usually get like six hours of sleep a night,¨ Moenning said.  

And Moenning isn’t alone. A google form was sent out to students at west to take asking basic questions about their sleep and homework schedules. The results were a little astounding.

At West, 50 percent of students have been getting an average of five to seven hours of sleep. Even worse, 15.4 percent get two to five hours. The lack of sleep for teens is turning into a nationwide epidemic. The long hours of sitting at the kitchen table, and still trying to fit in sports or social events doesn’t work anymore with your sleep schedule growing smaller and smaller day by day.

Grace Fleckenstein ‘19 also takes two Kirkwood classes. ¨There is like two [classes] in a track per semester, so yeah so we’re going to take like four total,¨ Fleckenstein said. Between classes and homework, unlike Moenning, Fleckenstein has the commitment of having school volleyball two hours a day, five days a week, and club volleyball four to six hours a week.

¨I don’t know how many hours that is, but it’s a lot,¨ said Fleckenstein. Homework is a priority but so is her responsibility of time management because as she admits, she is a procrastinator.

¨Yeah and i’m good at procrastinating.¨ Fleckenstein has a very busy schedule juggling extracurriculars, school work and still trying to fit in a regular sleeping habit.

Fleckenstein gets, on an average, four to five hours of sleep per night. Four to five hours of sleep is nowhere near the expected nightly hibernation. No wonder these students are so stressed between everything they have to do. ¨Kirkwood is hard, that’s why I get no sleep,¨ Fleckenstein said.

As seniors, Moenning and Fleckenstein both also have the stress and pressure of looking to colleges and seeing what they want to do in their upcoming years to look forward to. ¨Yeah so I applied at Iowa and then I applied as an open major, so I really don’t know what i’m going to do.¨ Moenning said. Fleckenstein has a general idea of what she wants to study most likely going to major in psych and spanish, but open majoring is always an option.

About 20% of new students entering the University of Iowa don’t have an idea of how they want to spend their time and what they want to study. Stressing over a college major should not be on your to do list, because it is still an option to figure out a major a year or even two into your college experience.

On the other side of the spectrum freshman still have four years until they need to begin to worry about college yet. Although freshman don’t worry about college yet they still have things to stress about on their plate. Evan Zukin ‘22 is a dancer at Nolte Academy of Dance and knows what it’s like not to have a lot of time to get homework done and keep up with his sleep schedule.

Having eight hours of dance each night and struggling to keep up with his showchoir and sleep schedule can be especially tough. ¨Yeah I get seven [hours of sleep],¨ said Zukin.

Homework also cuts into the natural resting period of the night, making teens feel stressed and overwhelmed.

Between these three students it’s clear that the lack of sleep is an issue and between stress and everything going on in their daily lives, it’s hard to imagine how they function day to day. Fleckenstein knows a thing or two about feeling stressed and feeling stressed on a daily basis? ¨YES.¨