why people barely stay awake during a school lecture but can’t sleep at night
In: Biology
Mental engagement. Some school lectures i had were either mentally taxing or not mentally taxing. Either limits the amount of input my brain can handle. Once my brain is taxed I get tired, taxed can mean two things for myself. Taxed means overwhelmed or underwhelmed(bored). On the bored side, it literally gets bored(it keeps repeating”I know, I know” and can’t understand why I’m here and decided to go to sleep. If it’s overwhelmed it gets tired and I go to sleep(doing the same thing over, and over, and over and over…etc). It just works too hard and needs a break. However, if it gets the right amount of engagement it stays awake with the idea of what it’s learning and how that information can be applied, just keeps going. At night my mind can relax and start processing all that information and make it work for me. Which, keeps me up with excitement for my next project.
Theres strong evidence that in puberty and adolescence the internal clock shifts to wanting to sleep and wake later, and it’s a bit of a struggle to get the body to work on the schedule schools force you to have.
There also may be a link with not being exposed to morning light( getting to school when it’s dark or just past sunrise and immediately into florescent lights) which makes it harder to sync with the early morning schedule.
So combine it not being a “natural” schedule while limiting access to the thing that would help switch to that schedule and you get sleeping in class and not being able to sleep at night.
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