5 ms·

I highly suspect that is because most of the students do not go to bed early.

• nkuttler 10y ago
  I also peak 1-2 hrs after getting up.
• th0ma5 10y ago
  It's always funny to me when people assume that sleep works the same for everyone or that it is as simple as scheduling something on a calendar. Neither are true.
  • alrehn 10y ago
    I think most people can change their sleeping habits. If you actually practice good sleep hygene and make consistent habits around sleep and you still can't get to sleep at a reasonable time, then you are not the norm and may have a medical condition.
    • epochwolf 10y ago
      Good sleep hygiene, work, and having a social life aren't always compatible.
    • kolinko 10y ago
      Honest wuestion - what do you base this on? Anything besides personal experience?
      • mannykannot 10y ago
        Well, I can say for myself that the younger me adapted faster to timezone changes than I do now. That adaptation is presumably driven by the diurnal rhythms of the destination, but given that a fair amount of modern life is conducted under artificial light (and artificial darkness, for those who sleep in), it seems plausible that sleep patterns could be modified to some extent, through adjustment to the already-artificial diurnal cycle.
  • maccard 10y ago
    If you're in your twenties, you've probably spent 8+ years building up a habit of sleeping late. It's expected that it would take you a reasonable amount of time to break that. As an anecdote in the opposite way, I am a sort-of night owl (my peak hours are roughly 10:00pm to 1:30am). As a teenager I was a late night, late morning (4am to 2pm) sleeper. Around 17, I started training at 7am, meaning I had to be up at 5:45 every morning. When I eventually quit after about 4 years, it took me another 4 years to un-learn the habit and move back to being an evening person.
    • komali2 10y ago
      I don't mean to nitpick, but I don't think it takes very long to break a sleep habit. I travel quite a bit and so am not only changing my actual sleep hours significantly (i.e. going to bed at what used to be my 4pm or whatever) but also changing them based on local timezones (so this job requires me to go to bed 2am local time, vs another job where I can go to bed 10pm local time). Anyway point is I'm usually adjusted within a week. And I certainly adjusted from my "classes start at 7am" in highschool schedule to my "classes start at 12pm" schedule in college near instantaneously.
      • eric_h 10y ago
        I've always found the best way to deal with jet lag is just to stay up until it's a normal time to go to bed in one's current timezone. Depending on where you are going/arriving from this can be quite a long stretch, but it generally gets me set on the local timezone within about two days. It helps that I'm not very good at sleeping on airplanes unless I've been awake for >30 hours
        • maccard 10y ago
          It also helps to pre-empt it a little. The last few times I've flown long-distance, I've tried to adjust my sleeping a day or two in advance of flying and had very little problems.
      • TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  • mannykannot 10y ago
    You are right to say that we should not jump to conclusions, but it is appropriate to ask to what extent the phenomenon is affected by culture - for one thing, that would raise the question of whether, and to what extent, students might modify their behavior in response, possibly nullifying the effect after a while. The paper itself seems to consider the effect to be largely genetic in origin, which I assume is probably a well-supported conclusion from other studies.
• p4bl0 10y ago
  Yep. That was why it was like this for me. Also 11am is also called "the moment when the coffee from the 10am break is effective".
• ajmurmann 10y ago
  People at different ages have a different circadian rhythm. For teens and people in their early twenties it's a later rhythm. You can modify it, but it works to varying degrees. There have been several studies that showed that high school for example should start later because of this. It's currently only ideal for teachers. Blaming this on a lack of sleep hygiene and discipline doesn't really address the problem. I'm not looking to any reference but a search should be trivial.
• iak8god 10y ago
  It's hard to say, but what this definitely does not show is that "starting university classes at 11am or later would improve learning." Rather it shows that, on average students, who have classes at 8 or 9 are most alert and receptive to learning by 11. Unless student habits have changed a lot since my time, many of them are stumbling out of bed at 7:45 to make that 8am class and haven't had anything to eat or drink yet. They consider themselves “evening people” rather than “morning people" because that's when the most interesting parts of their lives are happening.