Poor Grades Tied To Class Times That Don't Match Our Biological Clocks (berkeley.edu)

An anonymous reader shares a report: It may be time to tailor students' class schedules to their natural biological rhythms, according to a new study from UC Berkeley and Northeastern Illinois University. Researchers tracked the personal daily online activity profiles of nearly 15,000 college students as they logged into campus servers. After sorting the students into "night owls," "daytime finches" and "morning larks" -- based on their activities on days they were not in class -- researchers compared their class times to their academic outcomes. Their findings, published today in the journal Scientific Reports, show that students whose circadian rhythms were out of sync with their class schedules -- say, night owls taking early morning courses -- received lower grades due to "social jet lag," a condition in which peak alertness times are at odds with work, school or other demands. "We found that the majority of students were being jet-lagged by their class times, which correlated very strongly with decreased academic performance," said study co-lead author Benjamin Smarr, a postdoctoral fellow who studies circadian rhythm disruptions in the lab of UC Berkeley psychology professor Lance Kriegsfeld.

Comments

That's not what makes night owls

[Solandri]

Night owls don't stay up late and wake up late because they like to party and are lazy to wake up in the morning. Researchers have found that not everyone's biological clock runs at exactly 24 hours. Those whose clock runs slower (say 25 hours) are night owls - they tend to still be alert after the earth's rotation says they should've gone to sleep, and likewise tend to wake up later because their biological clock put them to sleep later. Those whose clock runs faster (say 23 hours) are morning larks - they tend to wake up earlier because their biological clock put them to sleep more quickly, and likewise they tend to fall asleep earlier in the night.

BTW, studies have shown people's average biological clock (when deprived of reference to day/night cycles) is 24.2 hours to 25 hours. So it's actually the night owls who are normal, and the morning larks who are abnormal.

Re: Grow up

[cayenne8]

Perhaps. Or perhaps - like me - one may only accept jobs without onerous requirements on hours worked. You want me to be in at 9am for a quarterly review meeting? Sure. You need me in by 9am every morning. Nope.

Ok, I can see this maybe if working an odd job, maybe a restaurant job (I did these while in school and growing up)...but you certainly can't be serious about this for a real job?

You must be young, perhaps a millennial in order to thing that 9am is "onerous".....but that's they way the real world works my friend.

If you want to make a healthy living, you need to face up to that quick.

The days of sleeping till noon are for teens still living at home, as an adult, you need to go to bed earlier and get up for real world hours.