The introduction of the new activity periods during Wednesday mornings instead of the typical delays, was met with widespread disdain from the student body. Yes, spending the first two hours of “hump-day” eating cheesy potatoes and Juuling in Starbucks were not very productive uses of students’ time, but the mid-week delay was a nice break from the grind of Monday and Tuesday, and made the latter half of the school week a bit more tolerable. These benefits seem pretty negligible, hence why removing them didn’t seem very earth-shattering—it didn’t seem, at least to the administration, that it would be a very big deal. It is a big deal. And I’m going to tell you why.

The Sleep Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to promoting a deeper understanding of sleep and sleep-disorders, says that “Sleep is vital to your well-being, as important as the air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat. It can even help you to eat better and manage the stress of being a teen”(sleepfoundation.org). The Sleep Foundation claims that teens need an average of eight to ten hours of sleep each night, but only 15% of teens are within that range.

Teens also tend to have unhealthy sleeping patterns due to inconsistencies in wake-up times—during the week they are much earlier than on the weekends, which are typically one and a half hour later. These inconsistencies are detrimental to teen health; “[lack of sleep can] limit your ability to learn, listen, concentrate and solve problems. You may even forget important information like names, numbers, your homework or a date with a special person in your life”(sleepfoundation.org). This lack of sleep can also lead to the development of sleep-disorders, such as sleep-apnea. But why does this matter? Public school kids and other private schools don’t have delays, so why should Central?

Central Catholic is a unique school because of its diverse student body. Students come from all over the region to put on their ties and walk through the Quadrangle every morning. Students coming from different parts of the city means that students have varying commutes; my drive to Oakland is a crisp twenty-eight minutes, but some of my classmates’ treks are upwards of an hour.

This means that while I may be waking up at 6:30 every morning, students living in somewhere like Cranberry will be waking up around 5:30, and students living adjacent to Central in somewhere like Shadyside are still asleep come 7:30. Having Wednesday morning delays to “catch up” mitigates this sleep discrepancy. Sure, there are a lot of students who do not have the luxury of being able to choose what time they arrive to Central on Wednesday mornings— I was in this position for my first two years. But having those two hours to relax or just rest your eyes in the cafeteria with headphones in, or just relax and collect your thoughts can make a huge difference.

Those extra two hours, whether it be in the cafeteria, the Bagel Factory, or at home, also afforded a fair amount of time to catch up on school work. Central’s curriculum is rigorous, and the work load can at times be a bit overwhelming. Having the security of a morning delay was very reassuring, especially when faced with a difficult week of work. Yes, there are study hall periods, but the purpose of the activity periods should be to get involved in clubs (which I will touch on later).

It was almost like a security blanket— we knew that if we didn’t get to a particular assignment, or if we were a bit behind in a class, we could get back on pace on Wednesday. From a mental health standpoint, coming from a student who is incredibly stressed, those Wednesday delays were a life line. At times it may seem that students’ stress tolerances are infinitely malleable, but everyone has a breaking point, and weekly Wednesday delays kept a lot of people from reaching it. Naysayers might contend “but you guys are just kids, don’t take school so seriously.” We can’t. The removal of weekly delays did not correlate to a decrease in work load.

Students are also more stressed than ever before; the APA (American Psychology Association) did a study in which they compared the stress levels of students to that of adults. Student stress levels were consistently higher than those of adults; “Teens report that their stress level during the school year far exceeds what they believe to be healthy (5.8 versus 3.9 on a 10-point scale) and tops adults’ average reported stress levels (5.8 for teens versus 5.1 for adults)” (americanpsychologyassociation.com). Stress during high school is virtually unavoidable, and though an extra two hours once a week may seem negligible, it really did make all the difference.

Lastly, I would be remiss not to mention the effect that activity periods have had on club membership. The new Wednesday activity periods were designed to make club membership more accessible, but it actually did the opposite. I am a member of a few different clubs, and, whether it was intentional or not, the activity blocks basically demolished the concept of after-school meetings. This means that there are only two periods during which students can participate in the sometimes more-than-two clubs they are involved in. Forcing students to make these decisions is not productive nor is it fair, and when there is a chance to make a commitment to a particular club, which would translate as attending two consecutive meetings, the pattern is broken by either a grade-specific speaker, mass, or a true delay Wednesday.

If anything, the new system has made it much more difficult to get involved in clubs, and makes membership inconsistent. The after-school meetings, though they did prove to be somewhat inaccessible to students who could not get a ride after school, afforded students the opportunity to engage in more clubs and do so more thoroughly, as the meetings did not have to be crammed into a two hour period three times a month.

My only suggestion is to reconsider the system entirely; students are not getting any less stressed-out, and the activity periods do nothing to help it. Having the activity periods one out of the four weeks, in my opinion, would be most productive. This would give students the opportunity to truly branch out into clubs or activities they have may not have had the opportunity to otherwise, without the pressure of that Wednesday being the only time during which clubs meet. This would also provide, at the very least, some semblance of relief to the sleep and stress issues—three days sleeping in is better than one. Obviously I would love the removal of activity Wednesdays entirely, but concessions have to be made.

Let me be clear: the purpose of me saying these things is not to disparage the decision to implement activity Wednesdays; I have the utmost confidence that the decision was made with the student body’s best interest in mind. This is not a digression on why I think sleeping in is good, nor is it some kind of Thoreau-esque manifesto calling my classmates to resist the oppressive restraints of activity Wednesdays. However, I am contending that it was not done well, and that there is ample room for improvement.