The Battle of the Birds: Morning Birds vs Night Owls

By Sammi Carpenter
Staff Writer

There are two different types of people in the world – early birds and night owls. Everyone has a different schedule depending on the type of person they are.

Early birds wake up early enough in the morning to get ready, take a shower, get coffee, and go to school. Night owls will wake up, brush their teeth, get dressed and leave in all of a span of 10 minutes.

Early bird and night owls schedules are completely opposite. Early birds go to bed early and wake up early while night owls go to bed late and wake up early (sometimes not by their choice) or wake up later in the day. Early birds are more active early on in the day and more tired at night while night owls are more tired early on in the day and more active at night. 

Freshman Tia Hines is a night owl. 

“I’d say on average I get around four hours of sleep a night, because I won’t go to bed until 2-3 a.m.,” Hines said. “I am usually pretty tired during the day but at night I am all energized. There has been multiple times where I have gotten no sleep because I couldn’t fall asleep due to not being tired at night.”

Research has shown that being an early bird is better for your mental and physical health. Early birds are shown to get more sleep than night owls and more Vitamin D since they are exposed to the daylight more. Cardiac Rhythm is the body’s 24-hour clock that regulates our sleep and alertness. Everybody’s internal clock is different, which explains people’s different sleeping patterns. Sleeping patterns can affect physical and mental health. A college student should get an average of seven-to-nine hours of sleep every night, but for some people that might be too much or too little, depending on their internal clock.

Freshman Kailey Reed considers herself to be both. 

“I am a night owl but I try to force myself to become an early bird. Caffeine helps me stay awake throughout the day,” Reed said. “On school nights I try to be in bed around midnight so I can wake up early to do a workout before classes start. Working out before my classes is really the only time I can workout because after classes I have to head straight to work.” 

Trying to change from one to another can be difficult due to how your body is set up. The internal clock controls a lot and it gets the body into a rhythm that is hard to break. It is not impossible to change between an early bird and night owl, it all depends on how much effort you put into it. On average it takes about 30-60 days to break a habit if you stay with it consistently which is exactly what the body is trying to do when switching between. 

Elizabeth Klerman, a neurology professor at Harvard said on CNN Health, “Behavior change is very difficult. We can say what works, and then you have to decide if you want to do it. We don’t have a magic pill.”

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