Lukas van de Coevering | The Myth of The Early Riser
With great difficulty, columnist Lukas van de Coevering has been dragging himself to his early lectures these past few weeks. But why, exactly? According to Van de Coevering, it is due to the myth of the noble early bird, an idea he makes a clean sweep of.
It’s something we all know. You’re ripped from your dreams into a state of half-consciousness by the wretched sound of one of your phone’s many default alarms. The time is 7:30. Despite your every instinct pulling you back into a blissful slumber, you will slowly force yourself out of bed and grudgingly get ready to fulfill your obligation: the 9 am class. With or without time to have breakfast, you will join your groggy peers on the crammed commute to university. When you arrive, your chosen source of caffeine will be the only thing between you and falling asleep in your chair in the partially empty lecture hall.
Even if some of us are morning people, we’ve all had many days like this, often more often than we’d like. In fact, science corroborates that many students do not deal well with early classes. A study in 2023 of Singaporean university students showed that attendance went from 50 percent for 9 am classes to 60 percent for 10 am classes. Even more to the point, sleep duration and grade point averages were significantly higher for students who had later classes. So why do we make ourselves suffer like this?
The way I see it, it’s because of a myth perpetuated throughout our society since before living memory. That is the myth of the noble early riser. One who gets up at 5 for productivity’s sake, sacrificing comfort to get ahead of those too weak to do so. It is a badge of honor and discipline when someone can get on with their day sooner rather than later. However, this idea is just that: an idea. The reality is that sleep is one of the most essential factors for a human’s mental and physical health. We have to get enough of it. Just watch Fight Club again if you need to be reminded of what happens when you don’t sleep well.
The obvious solution to this is for students to sleep on time so they aren’t tired of early classes. The fact is that you can’t get most people to do this. Firstly, our circadian rhythms are delayed as teenagers and young adults, meaning we biologically want to fall asleep later than older people. Secondly, we’re students. We like to stay out late, be a bit carefree, and enjoy the freedom of our youth. We don’t want to maintain a spartan regimen of being in bed by 10 pm every night.
The solution is more pragmatic. Delay all classes by an hour. Start at 10 am. If we extrapolate the results of the study I mentioned earlier, such a change would mean 4,400 more UvA students would attend lectures every day. Public transport would be less burdened and we would all be healthier, happier, and more productive. Being that noble early riser sounds cool until you feel like crap most days of the week trying to make it to a 9 am lecture. The truth is that to work hard and smart, we need to rest well. I challenge anyone to convince me otherwise, sleep is for the strong.
Lukas van de Coevering is a PPLE-student.
