By HannahCusick

Parents, guardians and concerned adults, it’s time to accept the unfortunate reality of our world; no matter how many times the phrase “the early bird gets the worm” is repeated, your teenager will continue to live their nocturnal lifestyle. Grouchy attitudes and death stares at 6:30 a.m. from night owls will continue to greet you every morning for their four years of high school. Just because most night owls struggle with early school mornings, doesn’t mean they are lazy or unsuccessful. Former President Barack Obama revealed to Newsweek that he is a night owl and doesn’t go to bed until midnight, sometimes even later. Staying up late isn’t a bad thing if you have a healthy sleep schedule.

Senior Elizabeth Foreman confesses that she hates mornings “with the fire of 1000 suns” and is a true nyctophiliac at heart, thriving best during nighttime. Foreman discloses that her disdain for the mornings is mostly because she hates leaving the comfort of her bed, especially for school. “Waking up is such an awful experience, I don’t know why anyone enjoys it,” Foreman said, “like you’re in your nice, warm blankets in your nice, comfortable bed and then you’re being told that you have to leave. Like no.”

You don’t have to be a night person to relate to Foreman; mornings would be substantially more enjoyable if it didn’t involve leaving the sanctuary of a cozy bed.

Foreman would preferably stay up for hours at night time, but school hours and extracurricular activities make it difficult to do so. Throughout her high school years, Foreman eventually found a way to make her nocturnal tendencies work with her busy schedule, but it took some trial and error.

Freshman year, Foreman said she “was still in the mindset of ‘I can’t go to sleep until I get my homework done.’” She slowly began to allow herself to stay up later and later and get less sleep. Gradually, she started to take naps after school which eventually led to her current sleep schedule. Now, Foreman typically sleeps in two different increments, once after school until around 7 p.m. and then again sometime after midnight, depending on how long it takes to finish homework.

Foreman confesses that she doesn’t get much sleep though because she’s a big procrastinator. At night, with her whole house to herself, Foreman said “I like to have hours to myself to be on TikTok and to watch the TV shows I want to watch and the movies I want to watch… sometimes I just want to watch a TV show and not have anyone else awake to know that I’m procrastinating my homework.”

From one procrastinator to another, Foreman says she wouldn’t recommend this sleep schedule to anyone who has a similar issue with putting off homework. For those fortunate enough to not have a common procrastination problem, maybe Foreman’s sleep schedule is a good idea to try out.