High School Hours
ENGL 1020
12 October 2011
High-School Starting Time
Is waking up an hour later really worth it in high school? In the article High-School Starting Time, Jeff Varley, the author is trying to convince his audience of the troubles that high school students are going through by being forced to wake up early every morning for school. Varley wrote this essay his freshman year in college. The writer hopes to convince people that the best choice for high school students is for school to open later. In my opinion, opening school an hour later would not make a difference because students would still be as tired and unfocused. The need for this argument was created because the author was recalling his high school days and how difficult it was for him to wake up and to stay awake. He explains how hard it was for students to stay focused during class. He talks about how even though he tried to go to bed early, he’d find something else to do and wouldn’t fall asleep until around 11:30, and yet he’d still be feeling sleepy when he woke up in the morning and would be sleepy and groggy throughout his early morning classes. Varley goes on to say, “Waking up at 6:30 in the morning, stumbling into the bathroom to get ready for the day, dressing while still half asleep … listening to our parents tell us that if we just went to bed earlier we wouldn’t be so sleepy in the morning or worse, listening to our parents call us lazy” (496). The author also mentions how some students would wake up and get ready only to miss the bus and be late to school. He mentions here that students would go “wandering into our first period classes merely to lay our head down on our desks to doze off for the next fifty-five minutes” (496). The writer uses a lot of evidence to support his argument. He uses research evidence from people that study sleep patterns, and also evidence that adolescents tend to sleep later and wake up later. He talks about how an average high school student’s biological
12 October 2011
High-School Starting Time
Is waking up an hour later really worth it in high school? In the article High-School Starting Time, Jeff Varley, the author is trying to convince his audience of the troubles that high school students are going through by being forced to wake up early every morning for school. Varley wrote this essay his freshman year in college. The writer hopes to convince people that the best choice for high school students is for school to open later. In my opinion, opening school an hour later would not make a difference because students would still be as tired and unfocused. The need for this argument was created because the author was recalling his high school days and how difficult it was for him to wake up and to stay awake. He explains how hard it was for students to stay focused during class. He talks about how even though he tried to go to bed early, he’d find something else to do and wouldn’t fall asleep until around 11:30, and yet he’d still be feeling sleepy when he woke up in the morning and would be sleepy and groggy throughout his early morning classes. Varley goes on to say, “Waking up at 6:30 in the morning, stumbling into the bathroom to get ready for the day, dressing while still half asleep … listening to our parents tell us that if we just went to bed earlier we wouldn’t be so sleepy in the morning or worse, listening to our parents call us lazy” (496). The author also mentions how some students would wake up and get ready only to miss the bus and be late to school. He mentions here that students would go “wandering into our first period classes merely to lay our head down on our desks to doze off for the next fifty-five minutes” (496). The writer uses a lot of evidence to support his argument. He uses research evidence from people that study sleep patterns, and also evidence that adolescents tend to sleep later and wake up later. He talks about how an average high school student’s biological
Cited: Varley, Jeff. “High – School Starting Time.” “Reading Critically, Writing Well.” Ed. Rise B. Axelrod, Charles R. Cooper, and Alison M. Warriner. Boston: Bedford, 2008. 496 – 499. Print.