Daylight saving time change fails to serve original purpose, disrupts student scheduling

COURTESY IMAGE // WM.EDU

The biannual resetting of clocks are two days that live in infamy for the entire global population. Or, at least, they’re two days that live in infamy for me.

I have long struggled with the concept of daylight saving time, especially considering the time-taxing toll it takes on people. Every season, as I try and remember which way the clock turns, I weigh the pros and cons.

I always question the necessity of daylight saving, as well as on whose authority we all change our clocks. What would happen if we all simply stopped participating?

I shamelessly must remind myself of the incantation we learned as children: “fall back, spring forward.”

Despite my efforts to successfully transition from summer to fall and from winter to spring, I have messed it up pretty much every single year.

I have set my clock back when I was supposed to set it forward, done the reverse and even once forgot the day entirely.

That fateful year was marked by me waking up my parents in a panic at 6:30 a.m., fully dressed for the day, thinking I would be late for school. That was embarrassing, to say the least.

The worst part was that I was already so awake that there was no chance of me falling back asleep, even though that was supposed to be the sole benefit of the day.

This year, I experienced more confusion than relaxation yet again. I can say that the extra hour of sleep is nice in theory.

Not to sound ungrateful to the daylight saving gods, but my first experience with the confounded day as a college student resulted in spending my extra hour trying to figure out what time it was instead of sleeping. I find that the effects of daylight saving are useless on an already peaceful, quiet Sunday, and therefore I found altering my alarm clock a total waste of effort.

One may be able to tell that my recurrent ordeals seem to stem from the fact that iPhones and other devices will automatically change the time, whereas alarm clocks, microwaves, cars and the like all require the time to be reset by hand.  Now, all that clocks remind me of is the brutal fizzling out of sunlight by 5 p.m. and how badly I just want to be warm in bed at 6 p.m.

Leaving Swem Library at 7 p.m. has turned quickly from a scenic walk back observing a sunset to a freezing march through what feels like the middle of the night.

Ultimately, daylight saving is a practice that many have deemed unnecessary and inconvenient.

And if this “extra hour” is really so imperative, then let’s at least make sure it comes during a weekday where an extra hour of sleep is actually worth getting befuddled over.

Email Carina Pacheco at capacheco@email.wm.edu.

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