5 ms·

As a kid I remember waking up at 7 and heading to class which was starting at 8. I was half awake up until about 10 in the morning, I don't know how I was makin

As a kid I remember waking up at 7 and heading to class which was starting at 8. I was half awake up until about 10 in the morning, I don't know how I was making it to school in one piece (school was within walking distance and was about 15 minutes from home). Also, in the winter at 7 it was still dark and cold I still remember the a magnetic force I had to fight away from the warm cozy bed. That was me at the time. A group of kids didn't seem to have this problem at all, so this early sleepiness phenomena is not universal. Throughout my life I was also a night owl, my most productive and creative moments took place after dark. Recently, however, something changed. I feel much more comfortable in the morning, I even enjoy the quiet hours early in the morning until things start to hustle and bustle and enjoy and am able to go to sleep earlier. So to conclude, this is not a universal thing and this is the problem, we are all different so a one sized solution does both good and bad.

aswanson 7y ago
I had a split schedule in 7th and 8th grade, from 11:30am to 5 pm. Best time of my childhood education in terms of awakeness and alertness. High school was the opposite, horrible, had to be on the bus by 6:45am. It was dark and raining/snowing sometimes, we hid under parapets at nearby houses sometimes for shelter. I remember cursing the Board of Education during those times, they didnt have to suffer through the stupidity of their decisions.
- tartoran 7y ago
  Yes, I vividly remember the awful feeling when it was dark, cold, wet and on the way to school half asleep. We too had 2 shifts for school, the first 4 grades were in the morning and then it would alternate every other grade in the morning or evening. I liked when I had school in the second part of the day but in the winter I had a nearly similar experience returning home, at about 6 or 7 it was already dark, cold and snowy. And this schedule would eat out the whole day.
elwell 7y ago
As someone who I think excuses his own laziness with 'being a night owl', I appreciate your mentioning of recently changing. I'm an aspiring morning person.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- elwell 7y ago
  Given the downvotes, perhaps it wasn't clear I was referring to myself.
CoolGuySteve 7y ago
When I went to Waterloo, most of the math classes were scheduled around 8:30 - 10 while most of the computer science classes were scheduled in the afternoon. I'm pretty sure my major would be different if I was a morning person.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  We know that math professors see the blank looks and droopy eyelids in their 8 AM and 9 AM classes. Why do they schedule those classes?
  - sfifs 7y ago
    Because most professors are scheduling classes for THEIR convenience, not the students. You don't typically keep your professorship and grow in an academic career by teaching students. They're scheduling classes in a way that maximises productive time for them (pitching sponsors, supervising research etc)
    - mattkrause 7y ago
      While many profs would probably do this if they could, the registrar usually makes the schedule.
smichel17 7y ago
Wild guess: you started waking up a more consistent time each day (less sleeping in on weekends). This might have been a result of getting more sleep on weekdays and therefore not feeling like you need to sleep in, or of less late night socializing. As someone who has run the full gamut of sleep schedules over different years of my life, I've found by FAR (orders of magnitude) the most influential factor in how I feel in the morning is the consistency of my wake-up time. The only factor that can sometimes eclipse it is extended periods of sleep deprivation (eg, 1-2 weeks of averaging 4 hours per night). If you want to try this, I highly recommend an alarm app for Android called Talalarmo - https://f-droid.org/app/trikita.talalarmo https://f-droid.org/app/trikita.talalarmo
- tartoran 7y ago
  Yes, i think it is true and it makes a whole lot of sense too
pgt 7y ago
How has your diet changed over the years? I'd be curious to know if different foods and eating schedules might affect circadian rhythm.
- James_Henry 7y ago
  They do and there is quite a bit of research on it. Food is a major zeitgeber.
- tartoran 7y ago
  My partner is a vegetarian and a good cook so we don't serve meat at home. Consequentially I eat less meat now; I eat less meat also because the meat quality isn't very good unless you go to a very good restaurant and that is not 100% guaranteed either. I've got a friend who ran a restaurant business and was shocked to learn the price of the chicken was suspiciously low. After doing some digging I realized what most meat we eat, how it is produced, what animals are fed and all the antibiotics they're fed are quite bad for us. I frankly lost my appetite for meat. I started eating more fish instead, not a very good decision either but nonetheless better imho. I still eat meat but not too often, not sure if I'll ever become a fulltime vegetarian. Second, I stopped drinking alcohol excessively and completely stopped eating sugary drinks or sugary things in general. Rarely whenever I eat something sugary, because I'm no longer used to it, it makes me very nauseous.
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    > and all the antibiotics they're fed To nitpick on this one, the societal problem isn't the antibiotics, per se... it's that antibiotics get used to paper over an incredibly unhealthy and unclean environment, and that in doing they so encourage the rise of 'superbug' antibiotic-resistant diseases.
    - tartoran 7y ago
      But also the mass over consumption of meat isn't very normal either, plenty of countries are vegetarian, take for example parts of India for generations; to me at least, the current practices in our modern meat factories kill my appetite. I do still consume some animal products but always try to get those from farmers, and for one it's noticeably tasting better.
hinkley 7y ago
One year I had to take a class before school and by winter it started before sunup and it was horrible. On a handful of occasions I had a moment while washing my hair where I could not recall the alarm going off. I'm not sure anything aggravates a night owl more than discovering that they have accidentally gotten up early... except discovering you'd gotten up four hours early. And then barely getting to sleep in because fixing wet bedhead takes almost as long as taking a shower. I did not sign up for the follow-on class.
rebuilder 7y ago
I had the sleep schedule you describe until my first child. Now, I'm opportunistic. Generally I get up at 7 or so, because a certain someone makes sure no-one sleeps past that. It's fine, now. But at rare times the little one is away with grandparents, and then the sleep rhythm rapidly returns to night-owl mode. But my point is, I think maybe parents are a bit unsympathetic to the optimal sleep patterns of their children because those same children have spent years teaching the parents that sleep is a luxury you have limited access to.
airstrike 7y ago
Firefox just suggested the following article to me a minute ago, actually... https://getpocket.com/explore/item/brain-scans-reveal-why-night-owls-have-it-rough-in-a-9-to-5-society?utm_source=pocket-newtab https://getpocket.com/explore/item/brain-scans-reveal-why-ni...
lazyasciiart 7y ago
You got older. It is pretty well established that a) people are different but b) teenagers on average don't wake up early as well as adults. e.g https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170621140458.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170621140458.h...
grawprog 7y ago
I was the same as you until about 26-27. I could operate on nearly no sleep. As a teenager and throughout my twenties i didn't really like sleeping. I'd stay up past 12 most nights and wake up around 7 as a teenager and closer to 5 or 6 from about 21 until 27-28 or so. Then I just started appreciating sleep. I started going to bed around 9:30 or 10, feeling like shit if I get less than 8 hours consistently for some time in a row and just generally preferring consistency and routine for my sleep schedule, where as before I didn't really care or think much about it.
- tartoran 7y ago
  Yes, thats sign of maturing and doing whats obviously best for our bodies and implicitly ourselves. I know people who never learned this and somehow you can even tell by looking at them, their bodies always look more aged
Joe-Z 7y ago
> a one sized solution does both good and bad Not necessarily. Who says morning people have a problem with later school start times? They can still get up earlier if they like and use those hours for something productive (e.g. doing homework in the morning vs. in the evening / at night)

aswanson 7y ago

I had a split schedule in 7th and 8th grade, from 11:30am to 5 pm. Best time of my childhood education in terms of awakeness and alertness. High school was the opposite, horrible, had to be on the bus by 6:45am. It was dark and raining/snowing sometimes, we hid under parapets at nearby houses sometimes for shelter. I remember cursing the Board of Education during those times, they didnt have to suffer through the stupidity of their decisions.

tartoran 7y ago
Yes, I vividly remember the awful feeling when it was dark, cold, wet and on the way to school half asleep. We too had 2 shifts for school, the first 4 grades were in the morning and then it would alternate every other grade in the morning or evening. I liked when I had school in the second part of the day but in the winter I had a nearly similar experience returning home, at about 6 or 7 it was already dark, cold and snowy. And this schedule would eat out the whole day.

elwell 7y ago

As someone who I think excuses his own laziness with 'being a night owl', I appreciate your mentioning of recently changing. I'm an aspiring morning person.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
elwell 7y ago
Given the downvotes, perhaps it wasn't clear I was referring to myself.

CoolGuySteve 7y ago

When I went to Waterloo, most of the math classes were scheduled around 8:30 - 10 while most of the computer science classes were scheduled in the afternoon. I'm pretty sure my major would be different if I was a morning person.

jessaustin 7y ago
We know that math professors see the blank looks and droopy eyelids in their 8 AM and 9 AM classes. Why do they schedule those classes?
- sfifs 7y ago
  Because most professors are scheduling classes for THEIR convenience, not the students. You don't typically keep your professorship and grow in an academic career by teaching students. They're scheduling classes in a way that maximises productive time for them (pitching sponsors, supervising research etc)
  - mattkrause 7y ago
    While many profs would probably do this if they could, the registrar usually makes the schedule.

smichel17 7y ago

Wild guess: you started waking up a more consistent time each day (less sleeping in on weekends). This might have been a result of getting more sleep on weekdays and therefore not feeling like you need to sleep in, or of less late night socializing. As someone who has run the full gamut of sleep schedules over different years of my life, I've found by FAR (orders of magnitude) the most influential factor in how I feel in the morning is the consistency of my wake-up time. The only factor that can sometimes eclipse it is extended periods of sleep deprivation (eg, 1-2 weeks of averaging 4 hours per night). If you want to try this, I highly recommend an alarm app for Android called Talalarmo - https://f-droid.org/app/trikita.talalarmo https://f-droid.org/app/trikita.talalarmo

tartoran 7y ago
Yes, i think it is true and it makes a whole lot of sense too

pgt 7y ago

How has your diet changed over the years? I'd be curious to know if different foods and eating schedules might affect circadian rhythm.

James_Henry 7y ago
They do and there is quite a bit of research on it. Food is a major zeitgeber.
tartoran 7y ago
My partner is a vegetarian and a good cook so we don't serve meat at home. Consequentially I eat less meat now; I eat less meat also because the meat quality isn't very good unless you go to a very good restaurant and that is not 100% guaranteed either. I've got a friend who ran a restaurant business and was shocked to learn the price of the chicken was suspiciously low. After doing some digging I realized what most meat we eat, how it is produced, what animals are fed and all the antibiotics they're fed are quite bad for us. I frankly lost my appetite for meat. I started eating more fish instead, not a very good decision either but nonetheless better imho. I still eat meat but not too often, not sure if I'll ever become a fulltime vegetarian. Second, I stopped drinking alcohol excessively and completely stopped eating sugary drinks or sugary things in general. Rarely whenever I eat something sugary, because I'm no longer used to it, it makes me very nauseous.
- crooked-v 7y ago
  > and all the antibiotics they're fed To nitpick on this one, the societal problem isn't the antibiotics, per se... it's that antibiotics get used to paper over an incredibly unhealthy and unclean environment, and that in doing they so encourage the rise of 'superbug' antibiotic-resistant diseases.
  - tartoran 7y ago
    But also the mass over consumption of meat isn't very normal either, plenty of countries are vegetarian, take for example parts of India for generations; to me at least, the current practices in our modern meat factories kill my appetite. I do still consume some animal products but always try to get those from farmers, and for one it's noticeably tasting better.

hinkley 7y ago

One year I had to take a class before school and by winter it started before sunup and it was horrible. On a handful of occasions I had a moment while washing my hair where I could not recall the alarm going off. I'm not sure anything aggravates a night owl more than discovering that they have accidentally gotten up early... except discovering you'd gotten up four hours early. And then barely getting to sleep in because fixing wet bedhead takes almost as long as taking a shower. I did not sign up for the follow-on class.

rebuilder 7y ago

I had the sleep schedule you describe until my first child. Now, I'm opportunistic. Generally I get up at 7 or so, because a certain someone makes sure no-one sleeps past that. It's fine, now. But at rare times the little one is away with grandparents, and then the sleep rhythm rapidly returns to night-owl mode. But my point is, I think maybe parents are a bit unsympathetic to the optimal sleep patterns of their children because those same children have spent years teaching the parents that sleep is a luxury you have limited access to.

airstrike 7y ago

Firefox just suggested the following article to me a minute ago, actually... https://getpocket.com/explore/item/brain-scans-reveal-why-night-owls-have-it-rough-in-a-9-to-5-society?utm_source=pocket-newtab https://getpocket.com/explore/item/brain-scans-reveal-why-ni...

lazyasciiart 7y ago

You got older. It is pretty well established that a) people are different but b) teenagers on average don't wake up early as well as adults. e.g https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170621140458.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170621140458.h...

grawprog 7y ago

I was the same as you until about 26-27. I could operate on nearly no sleep. As a teenager and throughout my twenties i didn't really like sleeping. I'd stay up past 12 most nights and wake up around 7 as a teenager and closer to 5 or 6 from about 21 until 27-28 or so. Then I just started appreciating sleep. I started going to bed around 9:30 or 10, feeling like shit if I get less than 8 hours consistently for some time in a row and just generally preferring consistency and routine for my sleep schedule, where as before I didn't really care or think much about it.

tartoran 7y ago
Yes, thats sign of maturing and doing whats obviously best for our bodies and implicitly ourselves. I know people who never learned this and somehow you can even tell by looking at them, their bodies always look more aged

Joe-Z 7y ago

> a one sized solution does both good and bad Not necessarily. Who says morning people have a problem with later school start times? They can still get up earlier if they like and use those hours for something productive (e.g. doing homework in the morning vs. in the evening / at night)