If Staying Up Late and Studying Works, What Does it Mean for Modern Teenagers?

I’m Shaams Nur, a 9th grader from Birmingham, Alabama. My goal during quarantine is to experiment with 15 study methods over the next 100 days.

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Week 4, Day 1

This week is all about staying up until 1:00 am and learning how our internal clock affects our productivity. I’m excited to try this week’s method because I have never in my entire life ever studied past 11:00 p.m. before. Also, I already know that I’m a pretty slow reader at night, so I’m predicting that I might have bad results… but who knows? Maybe reading slower will make me reflect more and absorb material better.

I predict that studying late at night will work best for adults and children who are home schooled with lenient sleep and school schedules. Because I get tired very easily I don’t think this method will be the best for me, nor will next week’s method of studying early in the morning. I’ve previously found that I absorb the most amount of knowledge while studying from around 7–10 p.m.. However, as I said before, this is completely uncharted territory, so this study method may end up working very well for me, which is concerning because I won’t be able to use it during the actual school year after quarantine as it’ll be very difficult for me to both go to sleep late and wake up early for school. I still really like the Feynman Notebook Method and it’ll be hard for another method to rank higher than it. I find the content that I’ll study this week interesting, so I hope it lives up to my expectations.

This could really prove once and for all whether I’m a night or day type of person. If studying at night really does prove to work better than studying at any other time of the day, what does that mean for other high schoolers like me?

“If studying at night really does prove to work better than studying at any other time of the day, what does that mean for other high schoolers like me?”

They say teenagers need 8–10 hours of sleep everyday. Judging by my calculations, it would be impossible to simultaneously stay up late and get enough sleep since school starts at 8 a.m… All the science says this isn’t supposed to work. Let’s put it to the test.

Exciting Announcement!
On Week 15, I’m letting YOU guys choose the study method for the week. Comment below with which study method you want me to use. My schedule for study methods throughout every week is listed on the introduction to my blog (hyperlinked).

Thanks so much for reading, and I will see you all tomorrow!