As high schoolers, getting enough sleep every night is one of the many challenges students face throughout their high school experience, especially if they participate in extracurricular activities after school.

Finding a good balance between school, work, homework, sports, clubs before and after school, and sleep is practically impossible unless students keep a daily routine and allow sleep to become one of their top priorities.

The lack of sleep students are faced with every day can often cause emotional and mental distress. Not to mention, the sleep deprivation can result in dropping grades and lower GPAs.

Multiple times throughout the school day students comment on how tired they are or how late they had gone to bed because they had to pull all-nighters to finish an essay and five more pages of homework. While many may view this as an irresponsible student who had procrastinated and brought this small amount of sleep upon themselves, not everybody realizes why the student had to wait until the last minute in the first place.

By the time that a student gets out of schools, works for four to five hours, goes home to eat dinner, take a shower, and finish homework, they hardly have time to relax and think, let alone try to get a full eight or nine hours of sleep for school the next day.

Though it won’t necessarily help a student receive more sleep, there are some ways to improve the quality of sleep and regulate sleeping habits. Such as reading before going to bed, going to sleep without any background noise from a television, and to setting a bedtime for yourself, ideally before midnight.

Getting enough sleep, particularly on school nights, can improve students’ concentration at school and assist them when learning new concepts. This will ultimately lead to higher grades and better mental health which is very crucial throughout the teenage years.