Features

Students’ sleep schedule out of sync

By Jessica Melkonyan

As strict quarantine protocols continue to regulate students to learn from home, senior Kevin Castro believes that this routine is the result of his unhealthy sleep schedule.

“I believe my schedule has been affected because of the discipline dependency of staying home,” Castro said.

Quarantine, distance learning and the overall virtual life all students are pushing through for almost one full year next month leads to unhealthy sleep schedules. Students like Castro continue to struggle with adjusting to distance learning schedules in the spring semester after months of the same routine. Monotonous days and thrilling nights restrain students from conscious thoughts during daily Zoom meetings.

To think naps during the day would be of assistance to students during the day to balance the cycle, junior Allison Puc proves otherwise.

“The worst part is defnitely the headaches and dizziness. I feel so unmotivated,” Puc complains. “When I take a nap, I wake up with the worst headache.”

With technology being used throughout most of the day, it’s tough keeping up with daily assignments because of low motivation due to the lack of a healthy sleep cycle. While the nocturnal lifestyle may be deleterious, students like sophomore Dashiell Dekker experience more eventful nights rather than the daytime.

“I usually use time during the night to talk to my friends,” Dekker said.

During the night, some students use the time for themselves and reconnect with their well being. Others simply take advantage of the alone time.

“I enjoy the peace and quiet,” Puc said. “I love how no one is there to tell me anything and I can just chill with myself.”

Although the silence and self-recon ciliation may be temporarily benefcial for one’s mental health, this lifestyle poorly afects your mental and physical health during the day. Particularly during a pandemic, stress and other mental health factors are blended in with insomnia, creating a more signifcant situation of irregular sleep. Receiving healthy cycles of sleep help with your immune system and with sustaining low blood pressure, according to an article from Sleep Health Solutions. The basics of a healthy lifestyle and sleep cycle includes around 7-9 hours of sleep each night, according to an article from Sleep Foundation.

Reverting back to a healthy cycle isn’t so easy. Dekker admits that it’s tough to get back to that lifestyle.

“I tried at the beginning of the year,” Dekker confessed. “It’s hard to revert back to my old schedule because I’m so used to the new one.” Infographics by Valeria Luquin In February, 69 DPMHS students responded to a survey about how their sleep schedule has been disrupted duing distance learning.

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Club Corner: Leave stress behind, join the leauge online

By Nancy Medrano

The new Team E-sports DepartmentClub allows students to take a break from schoolwork, play video games and socialize with their friends.

“We wanted to start this club as a way to do what we enjoy, which would be playing video games and to relieve any stress students may get from classes through playing games,” club president William Myers said.

Myers and fellow juniors Nickalas Lembo and Jose Arcilla helped him create the club. They wanted to create a setting where students shouldn’t worry about the amount of unfnished work they have to get done. They usually only play online during the club, then it’s back to work. The club began on Jan. 26 and meets every Tuesday and Thursday. Photo by Nancy Medrano Members of the new Team E-sports Department Club are split into two teams to play a round of League of Legends on Jan. 28. Club advisor Lori Seo’s team won during that round. They recently moved their club time to 2:15 to 3:15 p.m. The club was originally “We were ecstatic when Ms. Seo told “We have no new updates but we held from noon until 12:30 p.m. but the us the club would be converted into an are doing our research so that we can students in the club quickly realized 30 esports group because that was one of make this work out and that we can try minutes was not enough time to play a the reasons for creating the club,” Lembo to fll out all the requirements one way or good game. said. another,” Myers said.

“I think it’s better because League At this moment, there are still no Students often have enough time to of Legends games take a long time and new updates about the club being play one or two rounds but each round the start-up for it isn’t really particularly turned into an esports team but many of is just as fun as the previous one. Even quick,” Arcilla said. The main goal of the club is for students to take a break from all the school work and hang out with their fellow classmates. Since the club “ We’re here to teach more people about if you have never played the game and are interested in joining the club, many members of the club would not hesitate and teach you how to play. You can ask questions as you play starts after the last period of the day, it is a good way for students to not how fun the game along or you can simply ask before you start the game. stress about their classes or schoolwork. “The purpose of the club is to play team-based online games,” Arcilla said. Math teacher Lori Seo, who is the advisor of the club, recently had a discuscan be. Jose Arcilla ” “It’s an easy game that gets easier to understand over time and we’re here to teach more people about how fun the game can be,” Arcilla said. sion with fellow students about turning Instagram: @n.ancyyyyyyy the club into an esports. If this ends up being the case, that means the people in the club will technically be in a sport as well. Turning the club into an esports the club members are hopeful that they would also allow our school to virtually- will receive news soon. In the meantime, compete against other schools across the they will continue to practice and imcountry. prove their skills.