Morning classes may seem like an opportunity to jump-start your day, but these early classes could be hurting you more than you know

Categorically, we are either early birds or night owls. Depending on our circadian chronotype — our body’s preference for periods of sleep and wakefulness — we either find ourselves being most productive and energized during the daytime or the night and we attempt to plan our classes accordingly.  

Early birds might actively seek out 8:30 a.m. classes, while night owls thrive during afternoon and evening classes. Many of us would like to be early birds to achieve the ideal student standard as typically portrayed through student influencers on social media. However, being an early riser can have detrimental consequences for our health.  

As we age, the body's natural clock controlling our sleep-wake cycle shifts; this internal clock is our circadian rhythm. For young adults, the circadian rhythm can shift forward two to four hours compared to an adult's circadian rhythm. As a result, we tend to wake up later in the day and go to bed later than the socially accepted time. However, we do not intentionally follow these irregular hours; we are just adjusting to natural changes in our body's circadian rhythm.   

However, we do not intentionally follow these irregular hours; we are just adjusting to natural changes in our body's circadian rhythm. 

With our biological clocks urging us to sleep and wake up later in the day, reprogramming our innate behaviours can feel like a challenge — because we are not meant to. Generally, young adults do not experience sleepiness until after 10 p.m., meaning that depending on when we fall asleep, we receive less than eight hours of sleep before attending that 8:30 a.m. class. For students who commute, 8:30 a.m. classes pose even greater risks as they must compromise hours of sleep to attend morning classes. 

Many students may believe that they can catch up on their missed sleep during reading week or winter break as they are officially finished the semester. However, a study conducted by Dr. Steven Lockley and his team, in the division of sleep medicine at Harvard University Medical School, found that the constant deprivation from eight hours of sleep per night causes unrecoverable sleep loss.

A study conducted by Dr. Steven Lockley and his team, in the division of sleep medicine at Harvard University Medical School, found that the constant deprivation from eight hours of sleep per night causes unrecoverable sleep loss.

According to the study, once there is a systematic lack of sleep not only does academic performance decline, but health risks, including obesity and symptoms of depression, also increase.   

Another study, by a team at the University of Rochester Medical Center, found that early school start times place students at greater risk of experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression due to compromised sleep quality.   

In contrast, later start times allow us to achieve proper rapid eye movement and non-rapid eye movement sleep, both of which are important for brain development and can contribute to better grades, critical thinking, problem-solving, and improved mood. By eliminating early start times, class attendance is likely to increase and students are less likely to be prone to substance abuse.  

In contrast, later start times allow us to achieve proper rapid eye movement and non-rapid eye movement sleep, both of which are important for brain development and can contribute to better grades, critical thinking, problem-solving, and improved mood.

Students cannot go to bed earlier to attend an early class; our circadian rhythm is programmed against it. As a result, early courses lead to less and poorer quality sleep, posing detrimental short and long-term implications for our health.  

For students, the benefits of later morning classes outweigh the cons. By scheduling classes at 8:30 a.m., universities continue to place their students in unfavourable situations, especially with mandatory morning courses, causing more harm than good.  

Students are procrastinating bedtime in order to deal with the high-stress of virtual university

While the now universally recognized COVID-19 pandemic rages on, there is another, far more common disease that has fully sunken its claws on McMaster University students: revenge bedtime procrastination.

COVID-19 may at least have a chance of defeat against your physique’s loyal antibodies, but this disease engulfs your mind entirely until it is in a constant battle with itself between what you desire versus what you need.

What is revenge bedtime procrastination, you may ask? This phrase was originally coined in China by workers as a sort of personal retaliation against their 12-14 hour workdays and describes the phenomenon where one purposefully “procrastinates” and delays a practical bedtime to avoid repeating the same exhausting weekday routine time and time again. 

The purpose of this action is to somehow accommodate leisure time in what is otherwise an extremely exhausting work schedule. In fact, our mental, physical and spiritual need for leisure is so valued that we are willing to sacrifice another equally valuable and necessary component of our lives: sleeping.

Despite knowing the horrible outcome of RBP in one’s everyday life, people, specifically students, simply cannot stop engaging in willful self-destruction in a high-pressure environment like McMaster. 

I believe we can attribute this phenomenon to the way our educators and McMaster have structured online education. There is a common misconception that online university, due to its moderately unsupervised nature and self-paced learning style is somehow easier. Yet, this could not be farther from the truth.

In order to compensate for the in-person university experience and to not compromise the quality of education, professors have deemed it suitable to give out the same amount of work, if not more than they would usually give, as we are spending all of our time at home. 

However, what our professors have failed to consider is that an in-class experience is not directly translatable to an online environment. Now that students are forced to teach themselves through hours and hours of modules, read online textbooks and constantly be on Zoom and other social media to stay connected, many are unwittingly finding themselves spending a good 12-14 hours of their day at a desk in their room in an effort to keep up with all the work.

The constant flow of content behind a screen at an unprecedented rate (pun intended) has left students scrambling to cling on to any precious facet of their life that is not bound to the stark white chains of Avenue to Learn.

Some of us have stopped exercising, reading books for pleasure, making art and music, spending time with our families and living in the present moment. Rather we are so exhausted from the demands of online school, that we have given up on the hobbies we truly love, which used to keep us intellectually stimulated and gave us an identity.

The only thing we have the energy to do after a long workday with minimal effort is to spend even more time on a screen, in the form of mindlessly scrolling through TikTok. Our perpetual exposure to blue light during the day and at night huddled under the covers on our phones only exacerbates RBP by disrupting our natural REM sleep cycle as countless healthcare professionals have warned.

McMaster’s students are human as well and we are deserving of work that can be completed within normal workday hours without severely impeding our sleep and leisure. When the spirit of the student body is crushed, it brings down the very quality of the university itself. 

Dear professors: 

When you post a nice message encouraging us to take breaks and go on walks, please sincerely allow us an opportunity to do so. Because until you do, the RBP way of life will be the only one students will know for the foreseeable future.