Reporter: Isleen Lee - Harvard-Westlake School
As students, one universal experience many can relate to is going to school with inadequate sleep. Whether it’s because of last-minute studying for a test, catching up on missed homework, or simply getting home late, many high school students have likely gone to school having slept very few hours the previous night. It truly is the worst feeling, watching the minutes pass late at night when you’re still at your desk, finishing whatever task, while feeling physically and mentally exhausted. Would this experience feel more durable if we weren’t as tired? This is a question I ask myself frequently, as I, too, have, countless times, slept very little and gone to school. “I wish there were more hours in a day,” or “Should I go to sleep and do this tomorrow?” are all thoughts I think of as I realize that I need to go another night and sacrifice my precious hours of sleep. However, because there cannot exist more than twenty-four hours in a day, and sometimes, it just so happens that numerous tests are on the same day, we must look outside the box for solutions. That is, energy drinks and caffeine.
At the start of this school year, I had never tried an energy drink. Fast forward to the present day, I have still not tried one. However, through my transition to my school's campus where the sophomores, juniors, and seniors are, I realized that energy drinks and caffeine are a popular choice of drink, especially among juniors and seniors. Soon enough, I learned that many of my friends were consuming energy drinks to help them get through the day and compensate for their little amount of sleep. Energy drink brands such as Red Bull, Celsius, and Marquis are the ones that are most commonly drunk by students. Many at my school mention that energy drinks are “what keeps them going” on some days, meaning that drinking caffeinated drinks keeps them going through the school day. Despite the dangerous side effects to one’s cardiovascular health after constant consumption of these drinks, many students heavily rely on these to prevent feeling excessively tired. In other cases, many students who do not drink energy drinks tend to consume coffee or matcha lattes from the Starbucks near our school. Because I struggle with headaches after consuming significant amounts of caffeine, I found myself falling into the latter category of students. Matcha lattes with extra scoops of matcha powder have been a lifesaver for me on many occasions. On days where I have slept very little the previous night, buying one of these from Starbucks or making one from home has been extremely helpful in making me feel more awake and less sleepy.
Although there is no substitute as functional as sleep, and by no means is this article promoting excessive caffeine consumption, sometimes, drinking caffeinated beverages can significantly help one feel less tired and focus better throughout the day. Realistically, drinking caffeinated drinks is definitely beneficial if you want to feel more awake for a temporary period of time and live up to the hype in that aspect, but in my opinion, it shouldn’t be continually relied on as a source of relief from physical exhaustion.
The Korea Daily Youth Program
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