Bed Times

As the impending doom of Spring Semester approaches I was thinking about my upcoming class schedule and what my weeks would look like with Class, Work, Social Life, and Xbox. I thought it would be best to sit down with a spreadsheet and plan out a common week so I could have a general idea of what the semester is going to look like (very responsible!).

As I dove head first into this week planning idea, I soon realized that I was going to be a busy busy beaver. Like most college students, as the activities piled up, sleep was the first thing to go. Not that this worries me to much, I strongly stand by the "You can sleep when your dead" motto, but it still got me thinking about sleep schedules of the population of the world.

On average I got about 5 hours of sleep a night last year. going to bed at about 0030 and getting up at 0530. I was never the last one asleep in my dorm but I was ALWAYS the first one up. Figured that is natural since I went to bed semi early as opposed to my neighbors. This semester I go to bed between 0200 and 0300 and I'm up by 0800 or 0900. You do the math.

Compared to my roommate I get way less sleep, and the few other people I hang out with I also get alot less sleep. Most of my friends are older and they go to bed earlier and get up about the same time. I know for a fact babies and little kids go to bed earlier. As most of us grew up, we were allowed to stay up progressively later. We would stay up later and later because the maturity level wasn't high enough to kick in yet. As you get older and more mature your bed time starts back down from 0400 to a more reasonable time like 2200.

Here is a graph to illustrate this concept:

Given that college is the 18-25 category on this graph, you have party's and homework. Once this phase passes you have less work to do at home and less of a crazy social life so your sleep pattern will even out.

This graph is just for shits and giggles:

This is fairly self explanatory. When you need to do things, you don't want to, commonly sleep is the culprit and now you must think of an excuse because you are late to work.

You start out wanting alot of sleep in the beginning of your life, and then the same in the end. Like most life patterns, shit gets crazy in the years between 18-25 (college). Why can't everyone just agree to go to bed at 2200 every week night and 2300 on weekends? It would be so much easier for the WORLD the next morning.