Sitting down at his desk, he checks his watch. It’s only 9 p.m. “Not too late,” he thinks before going back to work. Just a little bit later, he looks at his watch again. Suddenly, it’s 3 a.m, and he’s still studying.
Students are no strangers to being busy. With countless hours of daily homework, sports and other extracurricular activities, students must quickly develop strong time management skills and identify strategies that work for them.
Most students fall into two groups: night workers and morning workers. While both have their own individual benefits, studying at night tends to be better for memory and information retention.
“The trick here is that sleep is like hitting the save button,” Director of Marksmen Wellness Dr. Gabriela Reed said. “So if you’re studying in the morning before a test that’s later that day, you’re not getting the benefit of all the downloading that your brain does when you sleep.
So truthfully, the best thing to do is to study at night and then get some sleep.”
The problem with this strategy is that students often stay up too late studying with the goal of getting all of their studying of the night completed. This often leads to diminished sleep and tiredness the following day.
“For Upper School students, nine hours and 15 minutes is the ideal amount of sleep, and this has been determined by many years of research,” Reed said. “Teenagers are not yet fully grown adults, so their brains are still growing and developing, and they will get to the eight hour mark once the brain is done cooking.”
Students that don’t get optimal sleep are more likely to lose focus in class, forget information or have poorer memory than those that get the recommended nine hours of sleep. They then spend the night catching up on what they missed during the day, prolonging their studying and further reducing their sleep.
“We want more study and free time, so usually the only place that can give for free time is sleep time,” Reed said. “I know that a lot of the Upper Schoolers feel that way. The problem is that the trade-off is bigger than you think.
You’re actually really short changing yourself for the rest of the day.”
Reed says the best method to manage time is to plan out a schedule before every day that allots time for sleep, studying and a little bit of fun.
“I would work backwards,” Reed said. “‘If I’m going to have to be up by this time to get to school on time, what time does that mean that my bedtime is?’ Then I would work backwards from there. ‘What time do I get home?’ If I don’t have that much free time because because of my extracurriculars, responsibilities and homework, that’s how I’m going to best manage my time.”
As long as students find a good time to study while still getting the required amount of sleep, it doesn’t really matter what time of day they choose. In fact, according to Reed, the main problem for students is that they spend too much time on various distractions instead of studying.
“There are so many time robbers out there that steal so much of our time. You sit down and think, ‘What if I watch a few reels.’ And then you look up and it’s been an hour,” Reed said. “Instead, take that time to review a few days in advance for your tests. Now I’m benefitting from getting a nightly save button for four or five nights before the test.
People make the mistake of cramming the night before the test, and then they only get one save. We need to see the material over and over and over again and sleep in between in order to actually be good at it.”
Freshman Bryan Li is one of the many students at St. Mark’s who has to balance many activities at once, as he manages varsity tennis practices with academic work.
“Extracurricular activities take away a lot of time during the day for me to finish my homework,” Li said. “As I am a competitive tennis player, I commit at least two hours a day to practice, and that causes me to sleep later at night.”
The “unlimited time” at night incentivises Li to work at relatively late hours. By completing his homework in the evenings, Li can work faster with a stronger memory retention.
“When I study at night, all the material is fresh in my mind from going to class in the day, and that helps me complete homework faster,” Li said. “Also, I can basically study for as long as I want; there is no specific time that I have to stop and go do something else.”
On the other hand, students like freshman Adam Zhang use the morning to study to refresh their memory on information they may have forgotten while they were asleep.
“I like to study in the morning because then I make sure I remember (the material),” Zhang said. “However, if I sleep, I get paranoid (and think to myself), ‘What if I forget material while I’m sleeping?’”
While Li strives to get around eight hours of sleep during the week nights, he often is required to use free time to catch up on sleep.
“I try to make up for the lost time on the weekends when I don’t have any activities in the morning like tennis tournaments,” Li said.
According to Reed, students each have their own time that they work best at, and it is up to them to find it and maximize their efficiency.
“Each student knows when they work best, and that time is different for everybody,” Reed said. “It doesn’t really matter what time you choose to work at, as long as you study strategically and effectively to make the most of your time.”