I'm Tiredd

            Lately, I have been very tired so I decided that maybe I should be getting more sleep.  At the same time, many nights I just cannot sleep when I try to force myself to bed knowing how tired I am.  I decided to do some research into why this might be and whether I might just be crazy and well I’m at it, I might as well just turn it into a blog post since I still need one for this week.

 

How much sleep are teenagers supposed to get every night?

            According to the National Sleep Foundation, teenagers need about 9 ¼ hours of sleep per night to be able to function at their best, although for some 8 ½ hours of sleep is enough.  A study by the same group found that only 15% of teenagers sleep at least 8 ½ hours on a school night.

            I know I am only getting around 6 hours of sleep most school nights, so this will explain part of my problem.  Honestly, I don’t know how I am supposed to be able to fit in 9 ¼ hours of sleep every night, but that is what I am supposed to be getting.

 

Why does it seem like I’m not the only teenager not able to fall asleep at night?

            There are actually quite a few sleep disorders I found during my research.  According to the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, many teenagers have delayed sleep phase syndrome which is what causes teenagers to want to be a “night owl” when everyone else in their family is going to bed.  This syndrome is believed to be due to changes of the internal clock associated with puberty, and results in lack of sleep among teenagers as school starts earlier.  There are also, more commonly heard of disorders, such as sleep apnea and chronic insomnia.

            The delayed sleep phase syndrome seems to make a lot of sense to me, I used to go to bed really early and now I struggle to fall asleep before 11.  From the amount of activity I see on Twitter late at night, I would also assume that many other teenagers I know suffer from the same syndrome.

 

What are some of the consequences of this lack of sleep many teenagers seem to be struggling from?

1.      Limit your ability to learn and remember things. Yikes! What if I forget where I’m going?  This might explain why I have been forgetting things lately.

2.      Give you more acne.  I am a teenage girl, and this is not okay.

3.      Lead to aggressive behavior.  Does anyone else seem to be noticing my mean streak lately? Just kidding… I haven’t noticed this one lately.

4.      Cause you to eat too much, and gain weight.  Once again, I am a teenage girl, not okay.

5.      Heighten the effects of alcohol and tobacco.  Well I have never done any of this, so I can’t really say too much about this.

6.      Contribute to increased illness.  I’m always sick, so I don’t know about this one either.

 

I have come to the conclusion that I really need to get more sleep, somehow.  I might start taking naps every day after school when I am feeling tired, and then do my homework later on when I can’t sleep anyway.  Have fun sleeping(:
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Bipolar Iowa

                It is cold outside, like really cold.  This week has just had some terrible weather.  Sorry for the people reading my blog, you probably think I complain a lot, but I like the hot weather during the summer.  It has been like negative fifty degrees this week, not really, but still on the wrong side of zero… Well, most of the week.  I am going to invite you to hear about Iowa’s bipolar weather.

            Last Sunday, I woke up and it was just slightly above freezing with rain so not that bad outside for January in Iowa.  By the time I went to bed on Sunday, the rain had turned to freezing rain and the weather had dropped, leaving a layer of ice on all the streets.  Fun, ehh?

            Monday, it began to heat up again and many of the rural Iowa schools did not have school due to the ice and later the fog.  Driving home on Monday night it was difficult to see five feet in front of my car due to the extremely thick fog.  That night, I had trouble sleeping… Because while I can’t sleep during thunderstorms.

            This is the real shocker…. Tuesday morning I woke up…. And it was sixty degrees outside and raining… Actually more like pouring out.  By the time I left school around lunch time for an appointment, it was already forty degrees outside.  You can only imagine what happened as soon as the temperature hit the freezing point.

            I woke up Wednesday morning with 6 new inches of snow, a layer of ice underneath that, more snow falling, and a snow day!!! Yeah, after sixty degrees the day before.  Wednesday was a very long day, stuck inside, not really able to do much of anything.

            Thursday was cold, super cold, and got colder as the day went on.  The same was true for Friday.  Both Thursday and Friday we had two hour delays because, honestly the roads are still really icy and it has just been so cold.  To make the road conditions even better, last night on my way home it was starting to snow again and it is supposed to again tonight.

            Does anyone reading this want to move to Iowa now?  I didn’t think so.  We have some crazy weather here and I want to give kudos to all the people in charge of clearing our streets after these storms and the officers who have been responding to the increase in accidents these last few days.

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February Resolutions

            Lately I have begun to wonder whether it is possible to make February Resolutions, like New Year’s Resolutions…. Personally, I have never even made a New Year’s Resolution; honestly, I know I would never keep them.  However, recently I have made a lot of changes in my life and going into this new month there are some things that I want to change back.

1.      I would love to get rid of my recently acquired, killer procrastination skills.  I know these are some skills that not everyone has, but they have gotten so bad that I am frequently doing my homework the weekend after it is due.  I wouldn’t be so worried about this skill since it has actually been quite nice, but my grades are really starting to reflect this….

2.      Can I sleep more? I think this is something every teenager wants, but I’m a crazy teenager that doesn’t even sleep in on Saturdays.  I go to bed most nights around 11 and during the week get up at 5, and on the weekends around 7.  Basically, this means that during the week I am getting around 6 hours of sleep and I am usually exhausted.  I would like to be going to bed earlier, and I might have to start shutting my phone off at night.

3.      To make my parents happy, I really need to start saving more of my money.  Right now I am living paycheck to paycheck.  If I stop eating out so much, I could probably save about a quarter of every paycheck to put in savings, rather than needing to take money out of my savings two days before I get every paycheck.

 

I guess, I’m not really sure whether it is socially acceptable to make February Resolutions…. I just know that it would be way too long until the time came where I could make some New Year’s Resolutions.  If your resolutions you made aren’t working out, try making some of your own February Resolutions, it might make me feel better about my craziness.

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Winter Driving

            Winter driving.  Well we have had to do it a few times already.  We had the blizzard back in December and then a few small snow falls.  Today is something new, today we have ice.  Ice I am only guessing is a little different than snow when it comes to driving.  With snow, we can see that the roads are obviously slippery and stuff; but with ice you can’t always see that the roads are as slippery.

            Whenever the roads are bad, I would always suggest just staying home; I would especially suggest this to teenage drivers, but even to more experienced drivers.  When the roads are as slick as they are today, no matter how good of a driver you think you are, it is very easy to hit a slick patch of ice and go sliding right into the curb and break your axle or whatever; or maybe into another car.

            There are some things about winter driving that really seem to piss me off that other drivers do.  I’m sure things that I do make others mad, but these just happen to make me mad:

1.      People who seem to think that they can drive the normal speed limit no matter how bad the roads are.  People like this are just plain stupid.  I hate when people do this because not only are they risking their own lives, but they are also risking everyone else’s lives out on the road.  If you are out driving and the roads are bad, use common sense and slow down!

2.      Drivers who will tailgate you because you aren’t driving the speed limit in the slick conditions.  Okay, there are lots of things wrong with this situation.  First, if the roads are slick it is probably smart to be going slow.  Second, it is stupid to tailgate someone because if they have to make a sudden stop you won’t be able to stop in time and hit them.  Third, the roads are slick so it is just that much more stupid to be tailgating someone. Duh!

3.      The thing that really makes me mad is drivers that think that you won’t be going extra slow when turning.  Hopefully you know what I mean, the drivers that don’t slow down when they are coming up on you while you are slowing down to an almost stop to turn but then are forced to turn faster.  I spun into the curb in front of my own house during the blizzard in December because some idiot (excuse my language) decided not to slow down or go in the other lane (it is a 5-lane road) when I was turning on to my street so I had to turn faster than I wanted to.  I am now scared to death to drive when the roads are just a little slick even.

I would like to suggest to everyone that you just stay home when it comes to freezing rain and snow.  I have already heard the sirens of multiple emergency vehicles today and it is not that late in the day yet.  I have also already spend about 30 minutes today watching a lady who, from the sound of it, hit the curb at least 2 times before coming to a stop in front of my house, walk around trying to call people to move her car and pick her up.  Stay home, it is better to be safe than sorry.  If you do have to go out, be smart and drive safe.

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Yay! Ice

            My week has been full of ice.  I am just being dead serious, and I really don’t like it.  This past Monday I went ice skating with some friends and today we have are receiving some freezing rain.  After last weekend in Florida, this week has just been…. Well…. Cold.

            My hate of the ice started on Monday ice skating which I had not done for a long time. I think the last time I had gone out on the ice was 7^th grade.  I did learn that it is probably a good thing I am flexible since I did the splits numerous times when I didn’t want to.  I also learned, never be the worst ice skater in your group.  If you are the worst one, you will get targeted and pushed over, I still have the bruise on my knee to prove it, and it hurts.  Even though it was painful, I do enjoy ice skating, and where I live it is actually really cheap to go.  If the public skate hours work for you, I would recommend going because it is a lot of fun and only $5 with a skate rental included.

            Today it is freezing rain, which I wouldn’t really mind too much if it was say like a Monday since then school would be cancelled but nope.  It is the weekend.  Whenever we have freezing rain (which is usually only once or twice a year) you are generally stuck inside for one or two days depending on how bad it is and can’t go anywhere.  I really wish that this had come on a week day so school would have been cancelled since I’m really behind on sleep and homework, rather than a day that I had to get up and work on my homework anyway.

            The bad news about freezing rain is, if it gets too thick, and the wind starts blowing, out goes the power.  Where I live, we don’t lose the power very often and I really hope we don’t.  It would be really cold in my house if we lost power right now, and my heated blanket I am under would turn off making me want to cry.

            I guess the last thing, people. The roads right now are like the ice skating rink I was on on Monday.  If you have any brains at all, and I mean any, don’t drive. Just be smart.  Stay safe out there.

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Miss Representation and Teen Pregnancy

This past week my AP Lang class has continued watching the documentary Miss Representation.  In case you missed some of my last posts, Miss Representation is a documentary about how the media has been misrepresenting women.  I have been reading some of my fellow bloggers posts from the past few days and a particular question that my friend Finley posted on his blog from the documentary but wasn’t able to come to a specific conclusion on got me thinking and I decided to do some more research into it.

            Finley had posed the question that he wasn’t sure how much teen pregnancy had actually increased in recent years as the documentary has suggested. I was also curious how true that was because it seemed to go against other statistics I had remembered hearing, so since Finley came to an unsure conclusion I did more research.

            I was able to come to the conclusion on this website that the amount of teenagers having sex has indeed increased in recent years.  Teenagers are also having sex at a younger age than before.  Although increased sexual activity and teens having sex at a younger age increases the risk of STDs, STIs, and pregnancy; the website also says that in recent years the usage of contraceptives has increased.

            When talking about teen pregnancy the website only talked about the high’s and low’s which occurred during 1990 and 2008.  During 2008 teen pregnancy was at a record low and a 42% decline from its peak in 1990.  Although this data only went until 2008 I came to the conclusion that teen pregnancy has decreased and not increased like the documentary claims.

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Iowa vs. Florida

            Here I am, sitting in Ft. Meyers, Florida in 65-70 degree weather the past 3 days, and people have been complaining it is cold.  I wish that locals to the area could realize how lucky they are.  The weather that is bringing out heavy winter coats by the locals (no joke I just saw someone) would be late spring and early summer weather in Iowa, so here I am in shorts and flip flops.  At one of our hotels, our breakfast in the morning was delayed; turns out the cook called in and was sick, the manager believed it was because of the “bad weather”.

            Unemployment in the Miami area is at 9% which is almost double what it currently is in Iowa.  The fact that I might move to an area with that large of an unemployment rate is daunting.  Finding a job in Iowa is hard enough, so it seems almost overwhelming in Miami.

            Driving in Florida is also far different in Iowa.  I have always heard that Iowa has the most considerate drivers in the country, and I had never been able to agree.  Being in Florida in a rental car, I have come to the conclusion that they are right.  If the light turns green and the person at the back of the line has not moved 10 seconds later, horns will be honked.  Yesterday in “stop and go” traffic on the interstate an accident occurred right in front of us and all the people began to walk around their cars in the middle of the interstate.

            A more entertaining difference between Iowa and Florida would be the creatures you must look for while driving.  Rather than watching for deer along the interstate, alligators are the hazards, and in areas that fences are not up to stop them; signs are posted similar to the deer signs in Iowa.

            Traveling here, and the thought of maybe living here in a year and a half has really got me thinking about how different all these other communities are around the country.  Although we live under the same government, and administration, everything is different.  Living here would definitely be far different than living in Iowa.

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