The other side of the beautiful month of May

We are now well into the month of May, which means AP tests, finals, show choir results (from both last month's vocal auditions and this month's dance auditions), final concerts, drum major auditions, graduation, graduation parties, etc. and so on. May is perhaps the busiest month of the year. Though not nearly as busy as deep show choir season in the middle of February, it seems just as bad because of the changing attitudes. All I want right now is to be out of school and relaxing outside, but instead I have finals to study for, music to practice, AP tests to prepare for, plus work and my social life on the side. It's hectic, especially when it seems so much easier to spend an afternoon lounging in the backyard. Then, of course, the wasted time must be made up somehow, leading into late nights of AP U.S. History and physics. I'm not lazy, just completely unmotivated at this time of year. I'm searching to find something that will keep me going for just another month, but I'm so tired of school that it seems impossible to go for yet another day.

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Stress goes back to the "slower-paced life" debate--the argument that life would be much simpler at a slower pace. Time is simply a measurement of actions, and humans strive to accomplish the most in the shortest amount of time. If we slowed our pace of life, and got rid of the "right-here-right-now" attitude, it is not that we would live longer, but we certainly would live fuller. It's simply too impossible to cope with little sleep, rushing around, overscheduling, massive amounts of homework, while still having to maintain a healthy diet and fitness, healthy relationships, healthy grades, all while trying to get accepted into college and do our best at everything. If we just reduced the amount of things we had to do, we could still do things well, while sacrificing the impossible.

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So while we save the fiesta (Spanish for "party") for summer, we can still reduce our stress now by having a siesta (Spanish for "rest"). To me, sleep and staying healthy is more important than spending countless hours studying for tests. Yes, it is important to study, and yes, it would be much easier if we had more time on our hands. But that's the problem with our high-industrialized, high-maintenance, fast-paced society. We have too much to do and too little time to do it. So yes, we should study for those oh-so-important AP exams, but what we shouldn't do is overstudy. We shouldn't sacrifice schoolwork for sleep and health. I get on average 5-6 hours of sleep each night, which is about 3-4 hours less than what I should be getting. Am I happy with this? Absolutely not. Do I feel like a zombie most of the time? Why yes I do. My sleep patterns are not healthy at all, but why do I lack sleep so much? School. School, school, and more school.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, teens need at least 9 1/4 hours of sleep each night, which is not even close to what I and most other teens actually get. I would say that I'm more on the extreme end, but I know others who get about the same amount of sleep as me each night too. Researchers say that if teens don't get as much sleep as their body needs, they suffer the ability to learn well and to concentrate, as well as memory loss. I certainly notice these symptoms in myself.

So at this point, when we sacrifice sleep for studying, working, and other school activities going on at this busy time of year, we tend to do worse on AP exams because we can't concentrate and focus anyway. So let's all do ourselves a favor, and just sleep a little.