“Nocturnal” students have arrived

Janine Yim
July 7, 2010
Filed under Features

Junior Trisha Castillo arrives at home at 5 p.m.  By twilight, she is asleep, nestled on the TV room couch.  At 12 a.m., when the majority of the world rests, she awakens to begin her day.

“It’s a really bad habit,” Castillo said, who began this sleep pattern in tenth grade.

“Until I came to ‘Iolani, I didn’t really have to worry about finishing homework.  I never really felt stressed to finish.”

Now, when pressure and exhaustion overwhelms her, Castillo tries “to get rid of the stress by sleeping early” and completes her homework when she is rested.

Though Castillo does not possess wings, drink blood or hunts prey at night, her sleep pattern mimics that of our favorite flying mammal: the bat.  She and other teens who sleep in the early evening and awake in the early morning compose a new breed of students: nocturnal students.

This transformation of sleep schedules is not the result of genetic mutation, but of physiological change. It’s a “natural body change where teenagers turn their clocks,” Dr. Jana Morisada, a pediatrician, said.

A change in a teen’s sleep pattern should not be harmful.

“As long as you get an adequate amount of sleep,” Morisada said, “I don’t think really matters.”

Courtney Sen, a senior who sleeps at 6 p.m. and wakes up at 11 p.m. at least twice a week, attributes her sleep pattern to school work.

“I think it depends on your course load,” Sen said.  “When you have a heavier course load, you get more exhausted.”

Andrew Ito, a junior, transformed into a nocturnal student for a quarter of his sophomore year as a “passive way of rebelling against conformity” and to learn scripts and computer codes late at night without the detection of his parents.

“There’re just no distractions at three in the morning,” Ito said, “except for some crazy dog.”

Unlike other nocturnal students, Ito wants less sleep.

“I’d rather have a spine deformity,” Ito said, and be “rewired to not need more than 2 hours of sleep.”

Morisada and school nurse Sharon Yonamine agree that such a lack of sleep is unhealthy.

“Students should get 7 to 8 hours of sleep, or at least 6 hours straight up, which I know is impossible for ‘Iolani students,” said Yonamine.

However, unlike Morisada, Yonamine feels that a switch in a student’s sleeping cycle is unhealthy.

Nocturnal students disturb their circadian cycles, a human’s natural, hormonal rhythm in a day.  Even nurses have a difficult time adapting the first few days of switching to night shifts, said Yonamine.

Despite the knowledge of possible health risks, a nocturnal sleep pattern “is a hard habit to break”, said Castillo.

Thus, nocturnal students continue to fly through their early evenings with sweet dreams and store up their energy for the night.