The student news site of Benilde-St. Margaret's School in St. Louis Park, MN

Knight Errant

The student news site of Benilde-St. Margaret's School in St. Louis Park, MN

Knight Errant

The student news site of Benilde-St. Margaret's School in St. Louis Park, MN

Knight Errant

At 6:55 am, the sun has risen and it is light outside. This is an accomplishment of daylight savings.
At 6:55 am, the sun has risen and it is light outside. This is an accomplishment of daylight savings. (Charlotte Feller)
Pro Daylight Savings

Every fall, the clocks are reversed an hour, and every spring, they are moved forward an hour. This is known as daylight savings, which benefits our society and should not be changed.

It’s the middle of fall, and we have just set the clocks back an hour. This means that when I wake up, I can see the sunlight through my window, and it’s not super dark outside. Before this switch, it would be pitch dark in the morning, and I wouldn’t want to get out of bed because it didn’t feel like it was morning. When I can see the sun when I wake up, I can get out of bed easier and feel better. Additionally, I don’t like driving to school in the dark when it feels like the middle of the night. I’d rather have it lighter in the morning and darker in the evening than darker in the morning and lighter in the afternoon. 

While I do understand that no one likes it when it gets dark at 4 p.m., it’s only for a small portion of the year during deep winter that this is the case. After the winter solstice, our days get longer, and by the time we reach summer, it’s light in both the morning and evening. Darkness in the afternoon for a small part of the year is a small price to pay for a bright morning all year round. 

Furthermore, when we set our clocks back in the fall, we get an extra hour of sleep from the time change. There are two 2 o’clocks in the morning, resulting in that “extra hour”. This gives a lot of people much-needed rest. We do “lose” an hour of sleep when we set our clocks forward in the spring, but I think it’s a fair compromise for the extra hour of sleep in the fall.

Another reason I like daylight savings is that it marks a shift in the calendar. I like the change because it’s boring when everything is always the same. Also, when you set your clocks back, it makes you think “It’s almost time for the holidays” and when you set them forward, it makes you think “It’s almost time for summer”. These thoughts give you things to look forward to instead of a long tiresome year.

Some people think daylight savings messes with our internal clocks and creates too much chaos, but it’s a twice-a-year thing that we’ve been doing forever, so they should be used to it by now. It doesn’t make sense to change a system that’s working—daylight savings is good for our community.

At 5:00 pm, its already starting to get dark outside. This is a consequence of daylight savings.
At 5:00 pm, it’s already starting to get dark outside. This is a consequence of daylight savings. (Charlotte Feller)
Anti Daylight Savings

The clocks have just been set back for this year's annual daylight savings. The days are starting to get colder and it's getting darker earlier. Now that I’ve set back my clock, I’ve come to the conclusion that daylight savings isn’t all that necessary. I mean, who really wants to reset their clock twice a year?

I’ve always found daylight savings to be confusing, and I know many others are probably feeling this way too. I don’t think it serves an important purpose. I prefer long nights and prefer it to get darker later. As a result, switching back the clocks right now was not in my favor.

Along with that, something else I often find annoying is when people don’t set back their clocks. It gets confusing to know if that clock is actually telling the time, or if it’s an hour behind or ahead. For example, the day after daylight savings time, the clock next to my bed was not set to the correct time. So I woke up like normal, and I immediately panicked thinking I had overslept. I had thought I was going to be late because my clock was an hour ahead. Eventually, I realized all my panic was for nothing, which I found super annoying at the time.

Not only does daylight savings make the clocks confusing, but it also messes with my sleep schedule. Though that one extra hour of sleep once a year is nice, in the spring, losing an hour is the most infuriating thing ever. I don’t know about others, but I for one find it really annoying.

Additionally, I find that when the sun starts to set at 4:30, it makes me feel unmotivated to do things, such as finishing homework after sports practice or after dinner. I often don’t have much free time after school, so I need to be productive in order to get good sleep that night and feel good the next day. And though some people may enjoy the change, I think it’s just confusing.

If daylight savings was stopped, I think it would resolve a lot of confusion. Many states already don’t have daylight savings so it wouldn’t be a large change. If anything, without losing an hour of sleep in March, you’d probably wake up feeling more refreshed and less tired than in past years.

In conclusion, I think if daylight saving was stopped, it would resolve a lot of confusion as well as conflict in our community.

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