You are staring at the ceiling and then your bedroom door and next your pillow and finally back to the ceiling once again. Feeling restless at eleven or twelve at night is pretty average for teenagers and most other humans. I’ve been there, you’ve been there, we all have been there! But, why is the lack of sleep so commonplace? Could it be the amount of work that is piled on day after day? Is it the increasing number of distractions Americans deal with when attempting to get more rest? Maybe it is a rise in undiagnosed insomnia? Or are we off the mark, and it can possibly be aliens that visit in the night that keep us awake for their own amusement? Who is to say (however, the extraterrestrials explanation seems the most likely candidate)? Anyways, because of the lack of sleep, one ends up hitting the snooze button like it said something about one’s girlfriend, and then keeps on smacking it until there is only five minutes before school starts. Whacking my alarm like it owes me money in the morning has been a large problem for me; I am not a morning person. It has grown so bad that I now have to get one of my family members to shake me awake just to get me out of bed, which sometimes does not even work! A lot of these issues are caused because I have to stay up to finish my homework. This factor, not mentioned earlier, is one of the most substantial reasons why we are sleep deprived; furthermore, everyone in high school, college, or the workplace have sacrificed their sleep schedule to be purified by the bounty of a completed project. You have a seven page paper due in two days? Well, why don’t you stay up till three a.m. both days to finish the project? All of your classes gave you homework, and you have a track meet as well? You have two choices: one, stay up and finish it or two, fail some of those classes.This tactic of getting work done is often seen as borderline crazy, as one could potentially cause more work later on because they are too tired to do their everyday activities. Even though this strategy is considered insane, most people will do this from time to time; moreover, if one is a procrastinator, then it will occur every time you have a research paper. After three years of sleep deprivation, I can say with absolute certainty not to wreck your scheduled rest time; it does not help in the long run because work will pile on no matter what. Overall, sleep is a responsibility we have to manage that will directly affect our health, and it should not be compromised to catch up on Algebra homework.