Sunday Night Syndrome: A Brief Explanation

Despite the NCAA tournament going on and a few other important events taking place this past weekend I'm going to spend the majority of this column discussing an issue plaguing what I can only assume to be mass proportions of the 30-and-under population in this world. The issue that I am speaking of, is what I shall to refer to as "Sunday Night Syndrome".

Sunday Night Syndrome is a condition that is both extremely simple in its manifestations, but scientifically complex in its explanation. Allow me to begin with the symptom as it is most straightforward to explain.

Mondays suck.

Yup, that's pretty much it. You hear the buzzing of your alarm clock at whatever time you have it set for (7:15am...oy) and your eyes open to check because it can't possibly be time to wake up yet. You even get mad at the clock when you realize it truly is time to get up, as if it has a choice in the matter. You're pretty much groggy and grouchy all morning, if not all day. This is nothing a strong cup of tea or coffee can't cure, but at the same this is a different kind of sucky you feel. This is a sucky that is not felt when your mother in law comes to visit, or when your favourite team loses by 30 in a game they absolutely, positively had to win. No, this is a special Monday morning sucky. We all know it.

But where does this come from? Why don't we feel this bad on any other day of the week?

Well folks, I have a hypothesis.

As a university student not too long ago I experienced this feeling as well, except it wasn't on Monday, it was on Tuesday. Why, do you ask? Well, my schedule at school was so unbelievably fantastic that I not only had no classes on Friday, which is actually not so out of the ordinary, but on Monday as well.

This allowed me a continuous, four-day weekend through my entire fourth year in school. It also allowed me to develop this theory as to why Mondays, or in my case at that time, Tuesdays, sucked.

You see, the fact that your Monday mornings suck have nothing to do with waking up on the morning at all. It all stems back to when you woke up the days before.

Working so hard and diligently during the weekdays and waking up at unruly hours of the morning sure tires a guy out, eh? So the only natural thing to do would be to give yourself the opportunity to sleep in on the weekends. This does two things; Firstly, it allows yourself the chance to rest and recoup some of the sleep you've lost during the work week. But secondly and more importantly for this argument it alters your sleep patterns enough from the work week schedule to affect your Monday mornings.

You see, it's only natural that when you when you wake up at 10, 11, even noon or later, you're going to be tired later in the night than you would have been had you woken up at say, 7:15 (...oy). This means you go to sleep on Saturday night later than you would have on Friday or Thursday (not taking into account going out the night before). Sleeping in further on Sunday both extends your ability to sleep even later and reinforces to your body this new, 'weekend' sleep pattern that will become such an issue not even 12 hours later.

This brings me the meat of the thesis, Sunday Night Syndrome. The problem begins when you try to get yourself back into your regular work week sleep schedule and fall asleep at a reasonable hour for waking up early the next morning (7:15am...oy). This, of course, is not possible. Your body now is so used to waking up and falling asleep later than normal, it simply will not allow you to fall asleep at 10 or 11pm as you would like. So 11 turns to 11:30, which turns to 12:30, which turns to 1am...

Maybe you fall asleep at 2, maybe 2:30, maybe even a much less ridiculous hour like 12 or 11:30. But the point is it is much later than you'd normally like to fall asleep on a work day. Thus making your Monday mornings...well, suck.

I am a Sunday Night Syndrome sufferer. I have experienced this malady for several years (beginning of course as Monday Night Syndrome in school as I explained previously) and for the past two years in its current manifestation. There is no way out of this vicious cycle before getting married and having children (we all know parents with small children don't get to sleep in on the weekends anyways, thus eliminating the problem), but there still may be hope.

I tell you this story not for your pity, but so you can better understand a condition that affects so many people around the world and perhaps one day, help find a cure to eliminate it.

Happy Monday morning people, if there is such a thing...