This article is the first of four in a series discussing student mental health.
I’ve personally had my experiences with choosing between having a missing grade in Infinite Campus and sleeping every year I’ve been at Littleton High School. Every time I choose Infinite Campus and every time I end up feeling worse than if I got a grade that could be fixed. As someone who’s juggling several extracurriculars, that’s typically what every night is looking like.
As it turns out, I’m not the only person who has encountered this dilemma. Junior Amanda Wylie says she’s “honestly stayed up doing homework this semester roughly around twenty times. As in total lack of sleep, by the way.”
“It’s affected me quite negatively too. It’s made me feel like I’m stuck in a loop and it has led me to a depressive state and a lot of the time it makes my head foggy, almost like I’m in a dream,” said Wylie.
Our mental health support staff even agrees with this, saying they estimate at least half of the student body doesn’t get the sleep they need.
“The majority of teenagers that struggle with sleep fall into some pretty generalizable bad patterns of sleep habits. These include not having a consistent bedtime routine which makes it harder for your body to recognize that the time to sleep is approaching, and prepare itself accordingly,” said Ms. Kuttler, a social worker here at LHS. “A lot of students also stay up later than they should, whether it’s to play video games or finish homework, and that complicates things further.”
In many cases, she’s right. I see my friends staying up all the time either playing video games or adding last-minute touches to an essay that’s due the next day. It also comes down to personal circumstances too. Not everyone can control their life and even if school cut down on the workload, there’s not much more to do about it.
“While we could certainly do a better job educating about and encouraging better nighttime rituals, it is ultimately up to the individual to put those recommendations into practice,” said Ms. Kuttler.
