All we want for Christmas : some sleep!

By  Neil Patel
       Bensalem High School

                   It's senior year.  You would think I would have a lot of things to look forward to.
                   Let's see, there's senior prom, the senior trip to Disney and going off to college next year.
                   Yet none of those things really matter to me.  In fact, Christmas break even pales in comparison to what I really look forward to: getting a good night's sleep.
                   You probably think sleep is just sleep, but as a teenager, you really appreciate those few hours you get at night.
                    It's tough for us.  First, we have to wake up early to get to school.  Then, we spend hours working hard and studying diligently (trying to stay awake in school takes just as much effort).  Afterwards, there are extracurriculars, which really take their toll.
                   When you think its all over and you can put your rough day behind you, you come home to your mother's absurd chores and those impossible calculus problems.
                    After all this, all you want is to get some sleep but, sadly, you end up with less-than-adequate hourss of it.  And this is only Monday!  You have to get through four more days like this before you're home free on the weekends.
                    However, it is also difficult to catch up on sleep during the weekend.  That's our only free time during the school year!  Rather than sleep away our day, we're prone to stay up late but have a good time doing so.
                     Man, do we pay a price for this!  Walking around the halls of a high school, you would swear all the kids were like zombies.  Homeroom, as well as math class, is a time where people catch up on sleep.  The tests that are given on a Monday mourning are a guaranteed disaster.  And participation in class is as prevalent as fans at a Flordia (now, Miami) Marlins game (which, if you do not know, is pretty much non-existent). 
                     So now with all of this on the table, is there really any remedy to the amount of sleep teenagers get?  A quick fix by many is the ever-so-popular nap.  After a long day of school, many people just nap their day away.
                     I've been guilty of this, yet it comes at a cost.  The few hours of sleep in the afternoon replaces the amount of sleep you get at night.  In the end, you are getting less sleep.
                     There is always just simply putting down the phone, closing the laptop and turning off the television.  Just doing this and going to bed earlier would do wonders, but it may be asking too much for a teenager to give up these things for the chance to crawl into bed earlier.
                     So it seems as if there really isn't much that can be done for teens.  No matter how bad they're going to feel in the morning and how much they'll regret it, there's little that can be done to alter their sleeping habits.
                     Because of this, I'm eyeing this weekend to catch up on the sleep I lost watching the Harry Potter marathon on ABC Family.