From AP classes and varsity sports to SAT preparation and college counseling, having a social life, getting sleep, and idly browsing the internet seem like luxury desires. With the growing pressure to keep up with academics, all while maintaining extracurriculars, students struggle with getting a sufficient amount of sleep to function on a daily basis.
“I think the hours of sleep I get definitely affect my productivity,” sophomore Saam Niami Jalinous said. “If I got more sleep, I would work better. Sometimes I try to get as much sleep as possible, but then it’s 10 o’clock and I still have the other half of my homework to do.”
Generally, Jalinous gets around eight hours of sleep, and sometimes as little as five.  Jalinous said that some individuals at Piedmont find it difficult to balance their workload and sleep.
“I guess around this time of the year things are piling up and I’m losing my motivation,” Jalinous said. “It’s this end of the year slump where homework is just too unrealistically large for this time of year when everyone is getting tired.”
Jalinous said that his grades drop as a result of exhaustion and decreased motivation, which in turn creates  stress. While Jalinous accredits difficulties balancing sleep and homework to procrastination, he feels that his procrastinating tendencies are as a result of the stress that come with homework and school.
“I feel suffocated when I’m home and it’s time for me to relax and I still have work I need to do,” Jalinous said. “I feel like I can never get a break anymore.”
Similarly, junior Claire O’Connor, with an average of over four hours of homework a day, seven hours of sleep, as well as extra hours for softball, finds it difficult to manage both sleep and homework.
“After a long day of school and practice, I am usually very tired and don’t have a lot have time or energy to finish my work so then I end up having to wake up early to finish,” O’Connor said.
O’Connor has made a habit of setting her alarm early in the morning in order to complete her assignments. She feels that being too tired to function after school affects her quality of work, leading to her decision to finish her homework when she’s more refreshed.
“It’s also important to learn to say no to some social events on the weekend if you know you have a lot of work due the following week,” O’Connor said.
Junior Sophie Nadler also finds it effective to plan a schedule in order to make sure she can get enough sleep as well as time for homework. On an average day, Nadler begins the process of doing homework around five and  around eleven, in turn getting around six to seven hours of sleep per night.
“I do get the sense that people have a hard time keeping up. I think by second semester of junior year though, a lot of my friends starting making sleep a higher priority,” Nadler said. “I know that I used to be much worse about going to bed early.”
Math teacher Doyle O’Regan says that as a teacher he gives a fair amount of homework. In his regular statistic classes, students have a light workload and complete majority of their assignments in class. However, in accelerated classes, like Honors Statistics, students have a heavy amount of homework with a lot of reading and take home assignments. All in all, O’Regan gets the impression that students struggle with balancing their various classes.
“My sense is that a lot of students, in general, have difficulty managing their load,” O’Regan said.  “Whether it’s school load or whatever is going on in their life.”