DST: The Biannual Bamboozlement Nobody Asked for

Imagine (or should I say remember?) waking up during spring or fall one day, showing up to school a whole hour later or earlier because of some arbitrary event called “daylight saving time.” We often force ourselves to remember—or for the more absent-minded group of us, forget—to adjust our clocks, only to wonder why we’re following this superfluous tradition.

Some of us might know the myth of Benjamin Franklin’s candle-saving idea where he kid that the Parisians could save candles by waking up earlier, but mind you, it was a joke! The actual history of daylight saving time originates during World War I to conserve energy, but even then, it seems that our governments were looking for ways to confuse our lives.

“It’s annoying that you have to adjust the clock by an hour every time, and if you forget about it, well… you’re kind of screwed. [Concurrently], it’s also too dark in the morning and you would be gloomy for the whole day,” said senior Tom Guo.

Aside from our own laziness, daylight saving time bears a number of negative effects on our sleep and circadian rhythm. It’s been studied to increase the risk of heart attacks, incidents, and our general grumpiness. It’s ironic—we’re losing productivity in our attempts to save energy.

Now onto the Trump card—he’s recently proposed to eliminate daylight saving time, in addition to a number of unconventional ideas he’s proposed. Though, unlike many of his other ideas, daylight saving time’s elimination has been generally met with bipartisan support, a number of politicians, even within the Republican party, are confused or conflicted with Trump’s proposal, with representative Greg Steube stating that Trump just doesn’t want clocks to go “back and forth.”

But for most, it seems quite logical that daylight saving time should be removed, given most of Africa, Asia and South America don’t observe daylight saving time. Ultimately, daylight saving time seems to cause more harm than it does good, it’s a major source of confusion and irritability. Let’s take a stand (or a nap) against this absurdity once and for all. It’s time to put an end to this biannual charade, reclaiming our sanity, sleep, or avoiding a tedious microwave clock change. The only thing that should be springing forward is our enthusiasm for a uniform, standard time, free from the nonsense of daylight saving time.