Adjusting to Daylight

Today (October 14th) the “sunrise” was at approximately 04:40 and the “sunset” was at approximately 22:47. I use quotes because the sun sneaks behind the mountains across Winter Quarters Bay but it lights up the sky all 24 hours of the day. It is difficult to adjust to, for me.

Humans’ circadian rhythm, or internal clock, responds to light. When it is light out we are awake, and at night in the dark our body is signaled to go to sleep. Here, since it is always light, my body is definitely tired but it’s not getting signaled to go to sleep. We try to battle this by blocking the light from coming into our dorm rooms with curtains, sticking to bedtime rituals like brushing teeth, and personally I take melatonin.

Last night I woke up completely confused. For some reason my alarm went off at 11:20. I did not even look at the time; my alarm went off so I woke up and started to get ready. After all, it was light outside. I was very tired and moving slowly, so I did a time check to make sure I would make my meeting… 11:30, 11:30??!! I did a quick panic that I was extremely late, so then I checked my computer, 11:31; then lastly I checked the TV’s weather station and it was 23:32. It was still “night-time!” Though I have no idea why my alarm went off, the 24 hours of daylight definitely tricked me into thinking I had overslept. Luckily I was able to go back to bed and wake up at 6 am, just like I was scheduled to do.

Written by: Bridget Ward