In the past month, all students across a wide span of universities were surprised one late night. For Eastern students, it was during the final day of our well-deserved and much-needed spring break. The surprise occurred to me when I looked at my phone and watched a minute pass, observing the 1:59 shift into 3:00 a.m. What is this ridiculousness? According to a very quick Google search, time travel is only theoretically possible and not yet here with us. So why is it that I have jumped an hour ahead outside of my will? Have I consented to losing this very important hour of two in the morning without prior knowledge?
My entire circadian rhythm has been thrown off, and every time I look at the hour, I think to myself that it would be an hour earlier if this change had never occurred. Professors already have various policies on falling asleep in their classroom, and someone decided it was a fit decision to reduce their sleep by a whopping 60 minutes? That is three thousand six hundred seconds! At this point, we’ve really lost logical reasoning for doing things in life. Were you aware that this “daylight savings time” can lead to health risks like a 24% increase in heart attacks? Not to mention the higher stroke rates and 6% rise in fatal car accidents, according to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. This sleep deprivation you people (whoever is at fault for this nonsense) are causing is unnecessary and a safety risk to all people, not just students!
Kelsey Hess has taught me that this disruption to our circadian rhythms can not only reduce productivity and increase drowsiness but is also linked to diabetes, obesity and metabolic issues. Our bodies are losing rest, and so are our minds. What will we do once they decide an hour is not enough? What happens when we are actually losing multiple hours? “I fell asleep and missed my midterm, my GPA is ruined,” said one student. Now, let’s regard the absurdity of the name in itself. Daylight savings? What are we saving by losing an entire hour? Daylight savings has ruined my life, and I am now hallucinating on the way to class because someone decided to steal an hour from me without me even expecting it. Does anyone actually keep up with when daylight savings events are going to occur? This is unforgivable, and I am officially requesting a form of protest so that everyone may have all their stolen hours returned to them and successfully earn a time to catch up on all their sleep deprivation.
Altogether, this propaganda known as daylight saving time is nothing short of a boondoggle, something I will not be falling for. From now on, we should all choose our own times of day for the sake of the betterment of our livelihoods. Have an assignment due in an hour at 11:59 p.m.? It is now 6:00 p.m. If the government can do it, why can’t we? After all, it is a feature in our settings. Perhaps Google was wrong; time travel really is real, and we have simply forgotten to utilize it.
