'Night Owls' Taking Morning Classes Get Poor Marks
Studying till late in the night will only fetch poor grades and it is high time to tailor students' class schedules to their natural biological rhythms, stress researchers. Students whose circadian rhythms were out of sync with their class schedules -- say, night owls taking early morning courses -- received lower grades due to "social jet lag," a condition in which peak alertness times are at odds with work, school or other demands.
"We found that the majority of students were being jet-lagged by their class times, which correlated very strongly with decreased academic performance," said study co-lead author Benjamin Smarr from the University of California-Berkeley.
To reach this conclusion, the team tracked the personal daily online activity profiles of nearly 15,000 college students as they logged into campus servers.
After sorting the students into "night owls," "daytime finches" and "morning larks" -- based on their activities on days they were not in class -- researchers compared their class times to their academic outcomes.
In addition to learning deficits, social jet lag has been tied to obesity and excessive alcohol and tobacco use, said the study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
"Our research indicates that if a student can structure a consistent schedule in which class days resemble non-class days, they are more likely to achieve academic success," said study co-lead author Aaron Schirmer, an associate professor of biology at Northeastern Illinois University.
Previous studies have found that older people tend to be active earlier while young adults shift to a later sleep-wake cycle during puberty.
Overall, men stay up later than women, and circadian rhythms shift with the seasons based on natural light.
Finding these patterns reflected in students' login data spurred researchers to investigate whether digital records might also reflect the biological rhythms underlying people's behaviour.
The results suggest that "rather than admonish late students to go to bed earlier, in conflict with their biological rhythms, we should work to individualise education so that learning and classes are structured to take advantage of knowing what time of day a given student will be most capable of learning," Smarr said.
"Different people really do have biologically diverse timing, so there isn't a one-time-fits-all solution for education," he added.
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Sharad Pawar praised RSS after seeing how it burst fake narrative balloon of LS polls: Fadnavis
Nagpur, Jan 10: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday said NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar praised the RSS after realising how the outfit managed to overcome the fake narrative spread by the opposition in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The opposition had claimed BJP wanted to win 400 seats to change the Constitution and end reservations, a narrative which BJP leaders later claimed hit the party hard.
On Pawar praising the RSS recently, the CM said the MVA was successful in creating a fake narrative during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
"When assembly polls were approaching, many people from diverse fields who are inspired by the RSS played their role and burst the balloon of this fake narrative. Sharad Pawar saheb is very intelligent. He would have certainly studied this aspect. He realised that this (RSS) is not a regular political power but a nationalist power. In any competition it is good to praise others," he added.
That is why Pawar may have praised the RSS, Fadnavis said.
Speaking at an interaction with senior editor Vivek Ghalsasi at Late Vilasji Fadnis Jivhala programme here, Fadnavis also said he had asked for organisational work when Eknath Shinde was made chief minister in June 2022, but senior leaders asked him to join the government.
He also said Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked him not to behave like an extra-constitutional authority in the government.
He said the decision to become deputy chief minister on the command of the party leadership earned him a lot of praise from the cadre.
After the massive mandate the ruling alliance received in the 2024 assembly polls, Fadnavis said people and party workers would not have been happy if the CM was not from the BJP.
Shinde himself agreed within minutes that the CM must be from the BJP, which itself got 132 seats and was close to a majority of its own in the 288-member assembly, he added.
On Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray meeting him during the winter sessions of the legislature in Nagpur, Fadnavis said he had announced he would not indulge in politics of revenge after becoming CM and all leaders responded positively to it.
On chances of the NCP (SP) and NCP coming closer or reuniting, Fadnavis said, "If you see the developments that took place from 2019 to 2024, I realised never say never and anything can happen. Uddhav Thackeray goes to some other party and Ajit Pawar comes to us. In politics anything can happen though I am not saying this should happen."
He praised BJP leader Arun Gujarati from whom he learnt patience, which he claimed was an important quality in politics along with the ability to take criticism.
In a lighter vein, he said, "I only get angry when I am hungry. If you see me angry then give me something to eat and my anger will go away."
