It’s five minutes past 9 a.m. and you’re late for class. This has probably been a familiar situation to many this week, thanks to that good old clock-changing habit we have.

Of course, you and everyone else in the country are, biologically speaking, still living in the past; University of Texas professor Michael Smolensky said it takes about 3 to 4 days to readjust to a time change. After all, homo sapiens have a natural, built-in sleep rhythm that works pretty smoothly if uninterrupted, and it has for the last 100,000 or more years — creationists: read as “approximately 6,000 years.”

These rhythms would prefer your body was still asleep, and they cause many of the body’s functions, such as walking, reading, thinking, speaking, judging, observing, interacting and reacting to “slack off.”

It’s too bad reacting is on this list. Hopefully, no one has hit any small children by passing out in their cars this week. Then again, many small children get to sleep in, so they probably aren’t outside playing in the street anyway.

So when did we start subjecting ourselves to hangover-like symptoms every morning for two weeks of each year? For those of you too young to remember 1784, this year yielded yet another original idea by Benjamin Franklin, famous for inventing the harmonica and the fire department. The 78-year-old Franklin wrote an essay to the “Journal de Paris” describing a method “to induce [the Parisians] to rise before noon.” It is possible that Franklin meant his idea in jest, but modern society eventually adopted the concept of “saving daylight.”

In World War I, daylight savings became a federal mandate, only to be repealed and reinstated twice. The current system allows states and even municipalities to become exempt, but at least the system stabilized in 1986.

However, beginning in 2007, Daylight Savings Time will commence three weeks earlier and end one week later, thanks to legislation from this past year. So much for “fall back, spring ahead.”

At the risk of restating the obvious, this new plan will supposedly save energy; Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan said the new time plan will save 100,000 barrels of oil daily.

Now that the “O” word has reared its ugly head, we see what Congress really has in mind. Although our society passes around words like “ethanol” and “coal” as alternative energy sources to oil, some politicians are still under the sway of the mighty oil industry.

Some arguments suggest that daylight savings might not actually save oil, as many consumers do not get electricity from oil consumption. Also, many consumers use the same amount of gas, if not more, during the extra hour available for outdoor recreational activities.

A side-note: one might assume that products such as coffee and aspirin might also receive a nice revenue spike every April and October as well from public grogginess.

The sad part is the that American society is so bound by our oil-shaped world of plastics and cars that we don’t mind having our natural sleep schedules interrupted by congressional mandate. The human race lived until about 150 years ago without forming a serious dependency problem on oil, but now we are willing to sacrifice our most basic joy just to get a petrochemical “fix.”

Since we consume about 25 percent of the world’s oil supply, maybe it’s time for our society to cut back on the myriad of products that come from petroleum. In fact, this can be done on the individual level, right here, right now.

Also, for those who disagree with having their sleeping habits mandated by oil consumption, there is an alternative option for protest: take a nice hour-long nap!