Importance of regular sleep cycle?

I recently started school again for my final year. This means getting up at 8:20. During the summer, I was getting out of bed at any time between 9 and 12 midday. I also go to bed at around 11pm now, where as before it was usually later.

For the three days so far I have had to wake up and get up early for school, my dreams have gone up in count, vividness, length, and stability.

Here's an example: from a month ago today, I had 3 dreams and a fragment. I rated it 7 out of 10 (as I do for all my dreams, then put the scores on a graph).
Last night, I had 5 dreams and 2 fragments, and I had to give it a 9, it was just so long, clear and vivid, but not the lucid 10 unfortunately.

I'm now thinking- was the reason for my fairly poor performance so far been down to the fact that my sleep cycle has been varying by 3 hours or so?

Is this is the case, then I would have to say for sure that having a regular sleep cycle that you stick to is just as good as having a DJ in my opinion.

Daamn. I woke up at 8:20 when I was going to elementary school.

It might just be that you have an alarm waking you up every morning instead of getting up whenever you want.

I suppose. I also noticed that I used to wake up 4 hours after I went to sleep during the summer, however with an alarm set for 8, I tend to wake up at 6am for some reason.

I wonder why that is.