At the foot of my bed there is a round white pad the size and shape of a fist. Every night, I slip it underneath my pillow, cross my fingers and hope that it will do its job. There is a big, ominous sticker on its face: Super Shaker Bed Vibrator. DO NOT OPEN.

The Super Shaker Bed Vibrator is connected to an alarm clock manufactured by Sonic Alert, a supplier of medical products for deaf people. The alarm clock also has 2-inch high LED numbers and beeps at 113 decibels, falling somewhere between a rock concert (100 dB) and a jackhammer (120 dB). It shakes, beeps and flashes me awake every morning. It's important to note here that I am not deaf and I have three other alarms set.

Gone are the days of the gentle wakening - bluebirds joining together in clear-throated song, smiling sun bursting over the land. For me, waking up is an ordeal. This is a result of the fact that I stumble through five of the seven days of the week in a haze of sleep deprivation.

And I'm not alone: 20 percent of people miss work because of sleep problems, according to a 2005 National Sleep Foundation survey. And half of young people (ages 14 to 20) receive an insufficient amount of sleep, according to the 2006 survey. Only 15 percent get the recommended 8.5 hours of sleep.

Till Roenneberg, a researcher in Munich, calls this phenomenon social jetlag, which is the permanent state of being out of sync with the rest of society. So if I yawn in a discussion section (or end up face-first in a puddle of my own drool in a large lecture), is it essentially my problem or can I blame society?

According to Russell Foster, an Oxford University circadian neuroscientist, it's society's problem. "It is cruel to impose a cultural pattern on teenagers that makes them underachieve," Foster said in the London Evening Standard.

But is it really "cruel," as Foster puts it? Well, both the CIA and KGB did have chunks of their torture manuals dedicated to sleep deprivation. But given a choice between waterboarding or missing a little sleep.

However, recent research has provided compelling evidence that adolescents from high school on to their undergraduate years have a late-shifted body clock. During those years, teenagers' bodies shift the peak production of the sleep hormone melatonin two to four hours later into the night, resulting in later wake times. As they enter adulthood their body clocks shift back onto so-called normal time.

Melatonin is produced by the pineal gland - a pea in the center of the brain - and is cued by the amount of light the eye receives. This system worked well enough in the Stone Age but not so much in today's always-on environments. Those who IM and Facebook in front of a computer right before sleep are essentially staring into a lightbox, throwing their bodies off track.

High schools around the country are now starting classes later to better accommodate both the habits and brains of adolescents. More than 80 school districts have made the switch. According to Foster, adolescents "don't start to function until 10 a.m. or as late as noon."

I asked psychology Prof. Robert Pachella about his experience teaching his Psych 442 class at 8:30 a.m. However, it is in a lecture format, and attendance is not taken. He did say instead that "the earliest time I have found it reasonable to teach a class that depended on discussion, conversation and interaction is 10 a.m."

So is it warranted to treat young adults as creatures whose exotic sleeping habits must be respected by their hard-driving taskmasters? Or is this yet another capitulation to our precious children - to the accommodation and softening of the youth - and to the decline of western civilization in general?

Well, real consequences are associated with sleep deprivation. Up to 60 percent of road accidents involve a lack of sleep, and people who only get five to seven hours drive with the equivalent of a .05 percent blood alcohol level - skirting the state's legal limit.

Additionally, task-specific impairments make it particularly difficult for students: reduced learning, impaired short-term memory and depression can severely handicap performance in the classroom. A sleepy student is like pianist with a stubbed finger or a clown who has just lost his funny.

Adolescent sleep patterns, as well as all other matters hypnagogic and soporific, are now studied by researchers in the pioneering University Center for Sleep Science. It is also home to the first sleep science graduate program in the country. But it will take continued and persistent investigation into this most peculiar animal, teenage H. sapiens, to convince the schoolmarms and early risers.