Between seniors swamped with college app anxieties, juniors taking on an AP-filled schedule, sophomores encountering their first APs, and freshmen who have never properly done a day of hard work in their lives until now, the start of the school year steals its fair share of sleep from everyone. Greedily hugging the stolen Zs to its heart, it eagerly munches on the troubled snores and “naked at school” nightmares, reveling in the resulting chaos. These affected students stumble to school with four hours of sleep under their belt, minds devoid of thought and dark eye circles rendering their faces like Bao Li and Qing Bao, the National Zoo’s new pandas. During class, nothing is different. Heads bob during boring history lectures (we get it, the Qin standardized EVERYTHING!) and eyelids droop as bodies melt into the desks in front of them. One could say that these students are, to the horror of every aesthetically pink Pinterest girl online, sleep deprived. 

Then again, do we really need to sleep a full eight hours anyway? According to Oluwaseyi Hester (‘27), “Sleep is like your appendix; you don’t need it.” Indeed, wiser words have never been spoken. We must not fall into the deceiving trap of medical advice. After all, it should be obvious that the doctors spreading the so-called “common knowledge” of these golden eight hours only do so at the beck-and-call of the government to render the population useless for the night. When else are they supposed to inject us with serpent venom and conduct alien experiments? 

To analyze it from the untrustworthy perspective of medical professionals, sleep only makes us feel more fulfilled, well-rested, and happy than we would be without it. A full eight hours of sleep is, according to those corrupted individuals, the only way to properly rest your body and let your brain process the memories from the previous day. And to that, I say off with their heads! We need more pessimistic people in this world! I crave the blistering comments and half-mumbled insults of the sleepless, the way they make me shiver with horror and dread their stumbling arrivals! To quote Marie Antoinette: “Let them eat Zs!” Who needs to process memories anyway? I prefer the fuzzy gray blobs of incoherent thought that make me feel like I’ve chugged ten bottles of beer and added a shot of vodka on top of that (not that I would know what that would feel like…). 

Une nuit blanche just simply has a certain je ne sais quoi to it (quote me on that one, Mme. Paturel). Magic seems tangible in the dark, when light pollution blocks the views of the twinkling stars and dad-snores emanating from the other room thud at your raging headache. After all, what better time to deep-clean your room, rearrange your rubber duck collection, and binge 20 episodes of One Piece than in the confines of the night? There is simply too much procrastination potential left during the hours of 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. to be wasted. Like a wise man once said: “I prefer to sit in my worries in the dark and let them coat over me like a hardened layer of chocolate: easily crackable, but better left untouched” (I am the wise man. I will be accepting my Pulitzer now.) The ticks of my alarm clock chasing the cursed morning golden hour only heighten my adrenaline and make sleep fearfully run even farther. Why should you wake up to watch the sunrise like a lunatic when you can just stay awake throughout the whole night and watch it through puffy eye bags and blurry vision? 

“Medical professionals” (who we all know by now are evil government robots) will wildly wave towards the wall of evils sleep deprivation brings to the population to refute any claims of government experimentation. Sleep deprivation is apparently the bane of our existence, causing deficits in alertness, which leads to higher risks on roads, less comprehension of school materials, and more strained relationships. I guffaw at these poor bots’ attempts to defend their corrupted employers. Obviously, the only way to solve problems is to eliminate the problems, amirite?

So despite all the “scientifically-backed” incriminating evidence that points to the “evils” of sleep deprivation, the question still remains: Do we really need to sleep for eight hours?

Pffffft. Obviously not. 

DISCLAIMER: This article is purely satire, and everything said in this article is for comedic purposes only. Please try to get your full eight hours of sleep every night. While I should be the last person you should be listening to when talking about getting your full eight hours, there’s a reason I never reached my full height potential. And no, before you say anything, it’s not because I didn’t drink enough milk.