Having just finished signing up for classes only a few weeks ago and changing my schedule dramatically during the first week, it has become more obvious than ever to me (and likely others) that the classes NC State offers in the morning are as impractical as they are painful.
Classes here can begin as early as 8:30 in the morning, while others can go as late as 10:15 in the evening.
However, these classes in the morning create a multitude of problems for students regarding health and time management. These early classes should be ended due to their physical, mental and logistical consequences.
But given that classes have to happen at some time or another, it would be prudent for NC State faculty to review “shifting” the window of classes to later in the day, mainly to replace the large number of morning classes with classes which take place in the afternoon or evening, seeing as classes at these times are much more beneficial to the work schedule and lifestyle of student than those which take place earlier.
Specifically, NC State should create a course selection that doesn’t have classes before 10 a.m. This specific time is based off of research by Paul Kelley, a sleep researcher at the University of Oxford, who proposes that individuals between 18 years old and 55 years old should not begin work until 10 a.m. His research revolves around the function of our circadian rhythm for sleep, which is essentially the internal clock that tell humans when to sleep, mainly based on light and other factors.
Early classes can create a system where students do not get the recommended amount of sleep that their circadian rhythm would prefer. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, this can create health problems, with recent research from the NCBI suggesting that lack of sleep can result in specific troubles with memory (which is especially detrimental to students).
But health reasons aren’t the only benefit to removing early classes (classes before 10 a.m.) from the course catalog. It would benefit the way students work in a logistical sense as well.
The largest benefit of later classes comes from their flexibility for homework and assignments. Consider two classes: one is English 101 at 8:30 a.m. and one is English 101 at 3 p.m. The morning class forces students to have assignments done the day before the next class, while the afternoon class gives the students all of the time leading up to their class to work on what they need to do.
In total, each student has the same amount of time between classes, but morning students will often have to pull all-nighters to complete an assignment due the next day. Afternoon students, on the other hand, can postpone any work they need to finish to the next day.
This difference results in afternoon students having more choices of when to finish their work, and choices which don’t sacrifice sleep to accomplish the task.
When faced with an urgent assignment, morning students often have to make a decision between sacrificing sleep for a grade or sacrificing a grade for sleep. Neither of these options is good. If you choose to sleep your grade could plummet. If you choose to work, you are doing serious harm by suffering the effects of sleep deprivation, which is doubtful to help with your focus during the actual class at 8:30 a.m.
Beyond this there are logistical issues that you might not consider: specifically, the effects of skipping an early class versus skipping a later class. If you skip an early class, chances are you’ll sleep in. Who can blame you? The classes are way too early and you want to sleep. But if you fell asleep at the appropriate time last night and decide to skip that morning, you are making a choice that can affect your sleep rhythm, since your body expects to be awake.
This can interrupt REM sleep and end up making you more tired during the day. Research from the Alaska Sleep Clinic shows that it is better to wake up in between sleep cycles rather than during one.
Compare this to if you skip a later class — there’s a lot lower chance of you sleeping then, and maybe you skip to be productive, or you hate the class, but ultimately you’re not as likely to sleep, and thus your sleep cycle does not get harmed.
Lastly, classes later in the day take an active role in helping you sleep. Classes in the morning let individuals recover from the effort spent during a day of classes. This unfortunately results in students being more recovered later in the day, at a time when they should consider sleeping for the night.
But classes in the evening and afternoon exhaust you, in a good way. These classes give you less time to recover before you need to sleep, and therefore make it easier to sleep when the time comes, giving you the right amount of sleep.
Overall, it’s obvious that later classes are beneficial and earlier classes are harmful for several reasons. Early classes prevent you from being more productive in a time-efficient way while also hurting you in a health-related way. It is for these reasons that NC State should heavily consider starting classes at 10 a.m.
