The whole neighborhood is sound asleep. Hours have passed since your family members, one by one, have bid you “good night” and retreated to their rooms. They are snoozing at the moment, embraced by the warmth of their beds and the comfort of their dreams. Everyone is asleep.
Everyone but you.
Darkness has consumed the world around you. Under the spotlight of your desk lamp, you hunch over your homework. With your heart racing, head throbbing, and body aching, you force your eyes to focus on the numbers and words that refuse to stay still. You risk a glance at the clock and a chill scuttles up your spine. Midnight has struck—your assignments are officially late.
This experience defines the life of a high school student. Whether it is late-night sports practices, long extracurricular activities, unchecked procrastination, or a combination of all three, a frighteningly large fraction of students do not start their homework until after dinner. Unfortunately, this often spirals into staying up past midnight to complete assignments and catch a mere four or five hours of sleep before rushing to school the next morning.
Assignment due dates at 11:59 pm not only exacerbate this situation, but perpetuate it. For one thing, it fosters procrastination tendencies in students who struggle with time management. Knowing that the deadline is not until midnight makes them think they can put off their tasks until the very last minute, resulting in the aforementioned scenario. On the other hand, students who are exceptionally on top of it also fall victim to this cycle. Returning home from long hours of sports practice, extracurriculars, or work, these students force themselves to stay up late until all of their assignments are satisfactory and complete. In either case, students sacrifice critical hours of sleep for meeting a deadline that does not benefit anyone.
For that reason, 11:59 pm deadlines need to go. Instead of keeping students anxiously hacking away at their homework until midnight, teachers should consider making assignments due at the beginning of the next class period. Since homework is given to ingrain information in the student and ensure they are staying on top of their studies, a due date before class the following day compared to one at midnight would make no difference in the students’ learning process. More importantly, this change would alleviate the stress of cramming everything at night: instead of every assignment of every class demanding to be done by 11:59, some can be finished at night and others the following day. Not to mention, students would have the opportunity to go to bed on time and wake up early to finish assignments.
Granted, such an opportunity will not be seized by all students—those who procrastinate will continue doing so. However, for the students who want to honor their physical and mental health, this shift in deadline times will be much appreciated.
Sleep is one of the most crucial components of life. Every part of your body and brain depends on adequate rest to function properly and grow to their fullest potential. This has already been recognized by the state of California: in 2019, it became the first state in the country to mandate later start times for public middle and high schools in an effort to encourage appropriate sleep schedules for teenagers. But late starts are merely only the start to fixing the problem—assignment deadlines that do not infringe on sleep are the necessary next step.
In other words, midnight cutoffs are as unreasonable as they are detrimental. They not only defeat the purpose of California legislation, they actively defy it. Students are in a vital period of development—physically, mentally, and emotionally—and sleep should be among their top priorities. Thus, it is time to cut the 11:59 pm nonsense. In fact, it is way past due.
