Essay #3
Kareem Ibrahim
Mrs. Isenkul
University 150
4 November 2019
Does more sleep result in better grades?
The article, Sleeping More Leads to Better Grades by Melissa Locker, discusses sleep and how it could improve the grades of our children. A lot of people go to school tired and sleepy because they stayed up all night on their electronic devices or because they were studying for a test. One study suggests that getting a better night’s rest could improve the academic performance of students. Researchers believe that lying in bed and not being able to sleep are not good for the body; and just make the body more tired.
Locker discusses certain points that makes a lot of sense to me. The article does suggest that not getting enough sleep could result in poor academic performance, I can both agree and disagree with this statement. In my past experiences, my lack of sleep has both harmed and helped my grades. It just depends on the subject in my opinion. In math my grade would get severely affected by my lack of sleep, but in English my grade would not suffer because I do my best writing at later times of night. While this article does cite many studies on how not getting enough sleep is harmful, I think that it can also be helpful to one’s work ethic by increasing the person’s drive to finish the work before they go to sleep.
Another topic I agree with in this article is that some children do have certain sleep issues or problems that have either not been diagnosed or not been thought of as to why kids do not get that much sleep. One example of this from my life can be how I believe that I have sleep insomnia. Every time I try to go to sleep early, I just wake up at around three in the morning and can not fall back asleep after that. I try my best to go to sleep. I put on sad songs or slow songs to slow my brain function down. I turn the lights off and do not use any electronic devices. I also even drink a cold glass of milk, but none of these things have worked. I still can not go to sleep early. So, from my experiences, I can whole heartedly agree with the statement that some kids may have sleep problems.
Even though this article does make some valid points, I do not believe that getting more sleep helps at all. In fact, I believe that if one can get work done without sleep it shows just that person’s mental toughness. If someone can stay up all night just to get their work done, then they deserve to be commended. Especially with how lazy these new generations are getting. I remember a time where the only thing to do was to finish one’s homework then the parents might let their child go play outside, but only until the curb lights turned on then they had to go back inside. Nowadays, kids have all this advanced technology and their homework is now done online just like everything else school related. This makes the kids even more lazy and not active. I think that getting the kids more sleep might help in the long run, but for now I do not believe it is that big of a concern.
To finish, this article emphasizes certain ideas about sleep and children. One of them is that not getting enough sleep could result in poor academic performance. Another one is that some children may have certain sleeping disorders that hinder their ability to sleep properly and for the correct amount of time. And the last one is that getting more sleep will help the student focus more on schoolwork.
Works Cited Page
- Locker, Melissa. “Sleeping More Leads to Better Grades.” Time, Time, 13 Jan. 2015, https://time.com/3663796/for-better-grades-let-your-kids-sleep-more/.