By P. Erik Meyer ’14
THE ROUNDUP
The average Brophy student sleeps six hours and 45 minutes a night.
A sample size of 50 students conducted by The Roundup revealed the number of hours a sleep they attain a week.
Six and a half hours is well below the National Sleep Foundation’s recommendation of nine and a quarter hours of sleep a night for teenagers.
According to senior Michael O’Gara ’14, often times he loses sleep from studying and distractions.
“Studying, and there’s a lot of distractions with computers and so you want to take a break for a little bit and you get distracted and then you realize ‘oh my gosh, I just wasted three hours doing nothing,’” O’Gara said. “I think that is a lot of times what happens.”
O’Gara must account for multiple AP courses, playing tennis and at least a 30 minute drive in to school everyday when planning for his sleep.
“I usually get about six hours of sleep a night, but on Wednesdays I probably get about an hour and a half more,” O’Gara said. “I wake up about 6:30 and go to bed around 11:30 to 12, sometimes 1.”
Similar to O’Gara, Jack Katzman ’15 said he struggles to reach the desired eight-hour minimum.
“I get between five and half to six hours,” Katzman said. “I usually go to bed between 12 and 1 and I get up at 6:30.”
Katzman plays varsity football and lives in Scottsdale, which results in at least an hour in the car each day.
“I usually have stuff after school so I probably get home around six o’clock and then I mess around and watch TV and stuff,” Katzman said. “I’ll finally get to sleep pretty late.”
According to the National Sleep Foundation, being sleep deprived is the equivalent of having a blood alcohol level of .08, which in Arizona can constitute
a 10 day jail sentence, a $1,250 fine, community service, alcohol education and treatment class and the installation of a certified ignition interlock device on all your vehicles, which requires the driver to blow into a breathalyzer each time he or starts his or her vehicle.
Despite the need for students to log more than nine hours of sleep each night, most across the country are well shy of that mark.
Brophy students are right on par with the national average of six hours and 31 minutes of sleep a night, according to the National Sleep Foundation’s 2013 study.
