7 ms·

Lack of sleep was definitely the cause of my terrible grades in highschool mathematics. I would stay up late (1-2 am) to play in starcraft tournaments, to have

Lack of sleep was definitely the cause of my terrible grades in highschool mathematics. I would stay up late (1-2 am) to play in starcraft tournaments, to have 8 am classes in mathematics. (There's a neat inverse correlation between my highschool grades and starcraft rank) It's crazy to me just how terrible school systems are at optimizing for learning. I would get terrible headaches from classrooms that had too many people and too little fresh air. I thought it was just me dreading my lessons, but in reality it was from co2 ppm reaching levels that humans can't properly function in. We wake up students too early, put them in rooms that kill cognitive performance and then have the audacity to complain when they can't follow along!

umvi 7y ago
> We wake up students too early Based on what you just said, if we moved school to 10am, you would just stay up until 4am playing StarCraft. I don't think school is too early. I think you just stayed up too late.
- sb057 7y ago
  By that logic, if we moved school to 5 am, he would have simply only stayed up until 10 pm. Is that particularly realistic?
  - gruez 7y ago
    >By that logic, if we moved school to 5 am, he would have simply only stayed up until 10 pm. I believe that. >Is that particularly realistic? The only issue is that at 5am, there won't be daylight during the winter. Lack of daylight presents safety issues and makes it more difficult to wake up.
    - pfranz 7y ago
      It's pretty well studied that most teenagers stay up late. My freshman year of high school my school was under construction so I was bussed across town. Which meant I had to wake up close to 5am. I don't remember staying up especially late, but I was perpetually tired. Id sleep on the bus both ways. In college I had a semester when I had a 5am class. I found it much easier to stay up all night and crash after than to wake up for class. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/articles/teens-and-sleep https://www.sleepfoundation.org/articles/teens-and-sleep
      - mkl 7y ago
        A 5am class? That sounds insane! What was the justification for that time?
      - subsaharancoder 7y ago
        This "most teenagers stay up late" must be unique to U.S./European teenagers with access to computers, video games, mobile phones, internet and lax parental supervision. As someone who went to boarding school from age 14-18 years where sleep and wake up time was well regulated I can tell you for a fact that we all looked forward to sleep time. Most students preferred waking up earlier to study to take advantage of the quiet and focus.
    - pengstrom 7y ago
      Haha, you'd like our winters then. If you look out during lectures you might catch the brief sunlight.
    - Broken_Hippo 7y ago
      I've never lived somewhere that had decent daylight in the morning. When I lived in the states, it wasn't light outside until 8am or something in the winter. I now live in Norway, and december days are less than 5 hours long where I am - and the light isn't very strong. Perhaps 5am is just a difficult time to wake up.
    - bigwavedave 7y ago
      YMMV, but I'm not sure that would be the case. As a teen, I had early morning seminary before high school each morning with other teens for church and we all had to get up between 4:30 and 5:00 but very few of us would go to bed before midnight. It was rough, but this anecdata fuels my bias for believing that most people feel like there aren't enough hours in the day and will stay up as late as they can in order to do what they please with whatever small amount of time is afforded to them each day. To be clear, this wasn't just my seminary class- this is the way teens in the seminary program have handled it for years and years, so it may not be the biggest but it's definitely not the smallest sample size available. Again, YMMV. I openly admit that I'm biased in my thinking because of the anecdata.
- kamfc 7y ago
  Poor logic. We sleep eventually.
  - wrktanice 7y ago
    Yes, and if we stay awake playing video game tournaments and staring at a computer screen, that's usually the point of complete exhaustion.
- tom_ 7y ago
  This is going back a fair few years for me, but I always thought school was too early! Perhaps you just didn't stay in bed for long enough? If you just wake up later, your bedtime will naturally end up later to compensate.
  - jjeaff 7y ago
    "All of the studies of adolescent sleep patterns in the United States are showing that the time at which teens generally fall asleep is biologically determined -- but the time at which they wake up is socially determined" https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181212140741.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181212140741.h...
- casion 7y ago
  I don't think this is true. When I was younger, I only could fall asleep at ~2am. I went to multiple schools with starting times varying from 5am to 12pm, it never made a difference. I just wasn't tired until 2am no matter what.
  - cco 7y ago
    Did you use artificial light anytime after the sun went down?
    - Broken_Hippo 7y ago
      Wouldn't one assume the folks use artificial light? People have been doing this well before electricity, especially during the winter. Doubly so up north. There simply isn't enough day here during the winter to do otherwise. Heck, my sunset time today is estimated at 16:22. I'll not have eaten dinner yet.
    - aliceryhl 7y ago
      Is your whole house a big window? Where I'm from we always have light inside
  - matwood 7y ago
    Maybe you're one of the very few genetic outliers. If you're never tired until 2am, and got up at say 6am for school then you're never tired on 4 hours sleep? I wish I was good on 4 hours sleep and never tired.
ceejayoz 7y ago
> I would get terrible headaches from classrooms that had too many people and too little fresh air. Did you test this hypothesis at the time with a CO2 monitor? Lack of sleep causes headaches, too.
- ClumsyPilot 7y ago
  I don't think that's a fair demand of a schoolboy (at the time)
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    That's why I think it's unfair to assume the cause of said headaches is CO2, when other explanations - like OP's acknowledged sleep deprivation - suffice.
    - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
      Not at all, we should not judge against the OP. Both conclusions are perfectly reasonable, have precedent, and could both be true simultaneously. ‘The essence of critical thinking is suspended judgement; the essence of this suspense is inquiry to determine the nature of the problem before proceeding.’ Unless you will conduct further inquiry, you should stop at suspending judgement. It appears to me that your judgement is based on prejudice against teenage behaviour rather than evidence.
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        I'm not sure why you'd think staying up late and getting a headache the next day is limited to teenagers. > Both conclusions are perfectly reasonable, have precedent, and could both be true simultaneously. This is exactly why I object to the statement "in reality it was from co2 ppm" without evidence from a CO2 monitor.
- MperorM 7y ago
  I didn't test it back then, it was only much later I made the connection when I started getting the same headaches from university, where I got proper sleep, enjoyed the coursework etc. A co2 monitor confirmed my suspicion. The problem with co2 monitors, is that it's really impractical to pull one out to check. I'm actually in the process of building one myself that instead sends descrete notifications to my phone if the co2 ppm gets too high.
EpicEng 7y ago
>We wake up students too early I agree, but... you were staying up until 1-2am playing video games. C'mon.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  I stayed up til the same time reading books for the same reason OP stayed up, not being tired. Teenagers have a delayed sleep cycle compared to adults, it’s not a matter of choice, it’s when your body says to wake up or sleep autonomously, same as my baby wakes at 5am and sleeps at 8pm, because that’s what his body is telling him to do.
  - wrktanice 7y ago
    Were you not tired because you didn't need sleep, or because your mind was being stimulated? It's quite easy to not feel tired when you're stimulated, but it doesn't mean you don't need sleep.
    - cgriswald 7y ago
      Sleepiness in humans is driven by the number of hours they remain awake and by time of day, more or less independently. In teens sleep onset as a result of these are both delayed relative to children and adults. Certainly there are cases where tired teens stay up because they are stimulated the same as happens in adults. But generally speaking, teens don’t stay up because they are playing Starcraft. They play Starcraft because they are up.
      - wrktanice 7y ago
        > teens don’t stay up because they are playing Starcraft. They play Starcraft because they are up. This is, at least in my experience, completely untrue. When I play Starcraft, I'll easily play till 2-3 am before I start feeling tired. And I'd continue playing, but I'm literally succumbing to exhaustion at that point. If I force myself to before that, say midnight, I start feeling tired almost immediately. And if I don't play at all, and don't substitute gaming with some equally stimulating activity, I can easily be tired and ready to sleep by 10 or 11 pm. Not to mention, in addition to the mental stimulation, the impact of staring at bright blue light on natural melatonin production.
masonic 7y ago
in reality it was from co2 ppm How did you measure this?
- ip26 7y ago
  I never had access to co2 meters when I was a teenager, but I had the same suspicion. Some rooms regularly left me feeling stifled & drowsy, and the first breath of fresh air out the door would rouse me in an instant. I plan on sending my own kids to school with a meter one day just to see. The reason I don't believe it was just boredom is the worst offender was always choir- a class I loved, and a class with obviously elevated production of co2.
- shakna 7y ago
  This one is actually backed up by a few studies like this [0] one. There's not enough studies to actually say conclusively that it's common or the usual cause, but there's enough to suggest it should be under consideration. [0] https://doi.org/10.1111/ina.12042 https://doi.org/10.1111/ina.12042
- lilgreenland 7y ago
  I have a CO2 meter in my classroom. It would get up to 2000 ppm if the fan was off. At that level you might feel some very mild effects on energy and focus. I keep the air intake on always now.
arkadiytehgraet 7y ago
I bet if you would study mathematics / do your homework instead of just playing SC, you would not have had bad grades. Source: studied math till 2 AM, played some TF till 4 AM, had math classes at 9 AM in highschool. Did not have bad grades in math classes.
sabas123 7y ago
Which tournaments did you play in? Good old SC ruined my high school but god damn did I learn much from playing it competitively.

umvi 7y ago

> We wake up students too early Based on what you just said, if we moved school to 10am, you would just stay up until 4am playing StarCraft. I don't think school is too early. I think you just stayed up too late.

sb057 7y ago
By that logic, if we moved school to 5 am, he would have simply only stayed up until 10 pm. Is that particularly realistic?
- gruez 7y ago
  >By that logic, if we moved school to 5 am, he would have simply only stayed up until 10 pm. I believe that. >Is that particularly realistic? The only issue is that at 5am, there won't be daylight during the winter. Lack of daylight presents safety issues and makes it more difficult to wake up.
  - pfranz 7y ago
    It's pretty well studied that most teenagers stay up late. My freshman year of high school my school was under construction so I was bussed across town. Which meant I had to wake up close to 5am. I don't remember staying up especially late, but I was perpetually tired. Id sleep on the bus both ways. In college I had a semester when I had a 5am class. I found it much easier to stay up all night and crash after than to wake up for class. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/articles/teens-and-sleep https://www.sleepfoundation.org/articles/teens-and-sleep
    - mkl 7y ago
      A 5am class? That sounds insane! What was the justification for that time?
    - subsaharancoder 7y ago
      This "most teenagers stay up late" must be unique to U.S./European teenagers with access to computers, video games, mobile phones, internet and lax parental supervision. As someone who went to boarding school from age 14-18 years where sleep and wake up time was well regulated I can tell you for a fact that we all looked forward to sleep time. Most students preferred waking up earlier to study to take advantage of the quiet and focus.
  - pengstrom 7y ago
    Haha, you'd like our winters then. If you look out during lectures you might catch the brief sunlight.
  - Broken_Hippo 7y ago
    I've never lived somewhere that had decent daylight in the morning. When I lived in the states, it wasn't light outside until 8am or something in the winter. I now live in Norway, and december days are less than 5 hours long where I am - and the light isn't very strong. Perhaps 5am is just a difficult time to wake up.
  - bigwavedave 7y ago
    YMMV, but I'm not sure that would be the case. As a teen, I had early morning seminary before high school each morning with other teens for church and we all had to get up between 4:30 and 5:00 but very few of us would go to bed before midnight. It was rough, but this anecdata fuels my bias for believing that most people feel like there aren't enough hours in the day and will stay up as late as they can in order to do what they please with whatever small amount of time is afforded to them each day. To be clear, this wasn't just my seminary class- this is the way teens in the seminary program have handled it for years and years, so it may not be the biggest but it's definitely not the smallest sample size available. Again, YMMV. I openly admit that I'm biased in my thinking because of the anecdata.
kamfc 7y ago
Poor logic. We sleep eventually.
- wrktanice 7y ago
  Yes, and if we stay awake playing video game tournaments and staring at a computer screen, that's usually the point of complete exhaustion.
tom_ 7y ago
This is going back a fair few years for me, but I always thought school was too early! Perhaps you just didn't stay in bed for long enough? If you just wake up later, your bedtime will naturally end up later to compensate.
- jjeaff 7y ago
  "All of the studies of adolescent sleep patterns in the United States are showing that the time at which teens generally fall asleep is biologically determined -- but the time at which they wake up is socially determined" https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181212140741.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181212140741.h...
casion 7y ago
I don't think this is true. When I was younger, I only could fall asleep at ~2am. I went to multiple schools with starting times varying from 5am to 12pm, it never made a difference. I just wasn't tired until 2am no matter what.
- cco 7y ago
  Did you use artificial light anytime after the sun went down?
  - Broken_Hippo 7y ago
    Wouldn't one assume the folks use artificial light? People have been doing this well before electricity, especially during the winter. Doubly so up north. There simply isn't enough day here during the winter to do otherwise. Heck, my sunset time today is estimated at 16:22. I'll not have eaten dinner yet.
  - aliceryhl 7y ago
    Is your whole house a big window? Where I'm from we always have light inside
- matwood 7y ago
  Maybe you're one of the very few genetic outliers. If you're never tired until 2am, and got up at say 6am for school then you're never tired on 4 hours sleep? I wish I was good on 4 hours sleep and never tired.

ceejayoz 7y ago

> I would get terrible headaches from classrooms that had too many people and too little fresh air. Did you test this hypothesis at the time with a CO2 monitor? Lack of sleep causes headaches, too.

ClumsyPilot 7y ago
I don't think that's a fair demand of a schoolboy (at the time)
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  That's why I think it's unfair to assume the cause of said headaches is CO2, when other explanations - like OP's acknowledged sleep deprivation - suffice.
  - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
    Not at all, we should not judge against the OP. Both conclusions are perfectly reasonable, have precedent, and could both be true simultaneously. ‘The essence of critical thinking is suspended judgement; the essence of this suspense is inquiry to determine the nature of the problem before proceeding.’ Unless you will conduct further inquiry, you should stop at suspending judgement. It appears to me that your judgement is based on prejudice against teenage behaviour rather than evidence.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      I'm not sure why you'd think staying up late and getting a headache the next day is limited to teenagers. > Both conclusions are perfectly reasonable, have precedent, and could both be true simultaneously. This is exactly why I object to the statement "in reality it was from co2 ppm" without evidence from a CO2 monitor.
MperorM 7y ago
I didn't test it back then, it was only much later I made the connection when I started getting the same headaches from university, where I got proper sleep, enjoyed the coursework etc. A co2 monitor confirmed my suspicion. The problem with co2 monitors, is that it's really impractical to pull one out to check. I'm actually in the process of building one myself that instead sends descrete notifications to my phone if the co2 ppm gets too high.

EpicEng 7y ago

>We wake up students too early I agree, but... you were staying up until 1-2am playing video games. C'mon.

barry-cotter 7y ago
I stayed up til the same time reading books for the same reason OP stayed up, not being tired. Teenagers have a delayed sleep cycle compared to adults, it’s not a matter of choice, it’s when your body says to wake up or sleep autonomously, same as my baby wakes at 5am and sleeps at 8pm, because that’s what his body is telling him to do.
- wrktanice 7y ago
  Were you not tired because you didn't need sleep, or because your mind was being stimulated? It's quite easy to not feel tired when you're stimulated, but it doesn't mean you don't need sleep.
  - cgriswald 7y ago
    Sleepiness in humans is driven by the number of hours they remain awake and by time of day, more or less independently. In teens sleep onset as a result of these are both delayed relative to children and adults. Certainly there are cases where tired teens stay up because they are stimulated the same as happens in adults. But generally speaking, teens don’t stay up because they are playing Starcraft. They play Starcraft because they are up.
    - wrktanice 7y ago
      > teens don’t stay up because they are playing Starcraft. They play Starcraft because they are up. This is, at least in my experience, completely untrue. When I play Starcraft, I'll easily play till 2-3 am before I start feeling tired. And I'd continue playing, but I'm literally succumbing to exhaustion at that point. If I force myself to before that, say midnight, I start feeling tired almost immediately. And if I don't play at all, and don't substitute gaming with some equally stimulating activity, I can easily be tired and ready to sleep by 10 or 11 pm. Not to mention, in addition to the mental stimulation, the impact of staring at bright blue light on natural melatonin production.

masonic 7y ago

in reality it was from co2 ppm How did you measure this?

ip26 7y ago
I never had access to co2 meters when I was a teenager, but I had the same suspicion. Some rooms regularly left me feeling stifled & drowsy, and the first breath of fresh air out the door would rouse me in an instant. I plan on sending my own kids to school with a meter one day just to see. The reason I don't believe it was just boredom is the worst offender was always choir- a class I loved, and a class with obviously elevated production of co2.
shakna 7y ago
This one is actually backed up by a few studies like this [0] one. There's not enough studies to actually say conclusively that it's common or the usual cause, but there's enough to suggest it should be under consideration. [0] https://doi.org/10.1111/ina.12042 https://doi.org/10.1111/ina.12042
lilgreenland 7y ago
I have a CO2 meter in my classroom. It would get up to 2000 ppm if the fan was off. At that level you might feel some very mild effects on energy and focus. I keep the air intake on always now.

arkadiytehgraet 7y ago

I bet if you would study mathematics / do your homework instead of just playing SC, you would not have had bad grades. Source: studied math till 2 AM, played some TF till 4 AM, had math classes at 9 AM in highschool. Did not have bad grades in math classes.

sabas123 7y ago

Which tournaments did you play in? Good old SC ruined my high school but god damn did I learn much from playing it competitively.