agreed, i wake up 5am every morning alarm or not, really a pisser on the weekends when i would like to sleep in, but when i do sleep in it's only till 7am, my son's getting into the same routine and he very seldom needs an alarm for school, he has a set bedtime of 10pm, at first he used to argue about it but now realizes its for his own good, i will let him sleep in on the weekends till about 9am , time wasted is time lost
Tell that to the sleep deprived masses at my school- some of us are barely staying awake. My friend is so starved of sleep he can't even talk in the morning. This isn't an intelligent way to live.
Also, to all you "oldschoolers", every "oldschooler" I've talked to thus far told me that their highschool started at 8:00, not 7:20. Furthermore, sleep patterns vary throughout your life- as a newborn, you were comatose for 20 out of 24 hours each day. As a toddler, you slept around 12-14 hours, as a kid, it drops off sharply to 8, then climbs up to 9 during puberty (so that we can GROW and be BIG and STRONG) then falls down to 8 as an adult. The elderly sleep even less (6 to 7 hours), and it only goes downhill from there.
The winter exacerbates the problem, since nighttime lasts from 16:00 to 7:00 in some cases. When do you know when to wake up? After hour number 13, or hour number 14?
I am a seasoned traveller, and this is more difficult than shifting a vast number of hours. In this case, a one hour shift must be made, and then maintatined very carefully. You would think that we would have this down by now, but puberty makes it impossible. Read my example of the total inability to fight the circadian rythms, and the punishment for trying: dreaming of having iguanas tied around your neck while attempting to find out why your bedroom smells like ham, and then waking up at all hours of the night. Kids willl still sleep at the same hour, and they'll be more awake during school.
-Penguin