Each year when Fall rolls around, more than festive drinks and colorful scenery come with it. Fall gives everyone a chance to catch up on sleep for an hour and wake up to a bright sky. This adjustment gives more light in the mornings and less in the evenings which some may argue isn’t beneficial to everyday life. Only getting one day to catch an hour extra of Z’s is outweighed by less sun in the afternoons.
This year on Sunday, November 3 the clocks were set back an hour at 2:00 am while most were fast asleep. However, everyone felt the time change after waking up fresh with an extra hour of sleep under their belt and the sun shining through their windows. We can credit our extra hour of sleep to our location on the earth.
During the Spring the clocks move forward to make better use of our daylight, giving us more sun in the evening. Most countries that are located closer to the northern or southern poles have a time change at some point during the year. So the Fall time change is actually a reset of the clocks from the spring. That is why everyone gains an hour. But there are a few drawbacks to the supposedly superior time change.
Tigist Peshek, a down-valley commuter and student-athlete at AHS, who plays basketball and soccer gets home most days in the late evening. “I feel like the time change annoys me because when I get out of school or basketball it is already dark outside and I feel like I’ve missed the whole day stuck inside,” Peshek said.
Riley Rushing, an AHS Sophmore, enjoyed the extra hour to catch up on missed sleep or homework assignments but believes the drawbacks to the change are still prevalent.“I don’t get up very early and I am mostly too tired to even notice it is lighter outside. So the time change just isn’t that helpful to me because the sun is going down right when we step out of class,” Rushing said.
When people return home for the day most want it to feel like they still have some time left in the day to enjoy the outdoors or even light from the sun. Personally, gaining one hour of sleep for one day is less valuable than having the sun up for the evening when one returns home from school or work.