How to Sleep in College
The feeling I most associate with my early student days is exhaustion . I wrote all my papers at night; I struggled with sleep every time the lecture got a little boring. However, you cannot live for years with a sleep deficit, so this is what I should have known from the beginning.
It’s orientation week for freshmen at Lifehacker! This week, we’ll share how to break out of the summer fog and plunge into the autumn burst of activity, whether you’re heading to campus for the first time, getting your kids ready for school, or looking for ways to simply be more productive in school. So buckle up your Guardian Hunters with Velcro, apprentices. The class is now in session.
I believe that it is possible
There is no freshman dorm in this world where everyone sleeps at 10 and wakes up refreshed every morning. But if you look around your school, you will find people who do fall asleep in the classroom and people who do not fall asleep. People who write their papers partly during the day, and people who sleep until 5:00 pm on weekends and have almost no time to do their laundry, let alone partying. You don’t need to have a perfect sleep schedule, but you do need a schedule that will keep you working.
If you don’t get enough sleep , your ability to learn suffers. You will not remember and think so clearly. You will be distracted when you get bored with reading. And then you try to lift your eyelids to make up for the lesson you missed all night.
There are also physical effects. If you don’t get enough sleep, you will either be too tired to exercise or feel pain and exhaustion the day after your workout. Without enough sleep, you will experience more stress and get sick more easily. You don’t want to be in this state all semester, so take a few steps to adjust yourself to a normal sleep schedule.
Plan yourself to get some sleep.
You may find it easier to think of your dream as a vengeful mafia boss. If you don’t pay your debts eight hours a day, someone will come and break your kneecaps. Plan ahead so you don’t end up in this situation.
When you plan your classes and activities at the start of the semester, take note. When is your first grade and what is your last evening commitment? Do you have enough free time each day to do unexpected homework and still have a little time to unwind? A busy day can lead to a wasted night just because you didn’t have enough time to get everything done.
When scheduling, remember that you will not fall asleep as soon as you walk through the door, or wake up immediately with bright eyes and ready to jog to class. Try to calm down at night and prepare for the morning.
Start now paying attention to how many hours you usually sleep each night and how you feel about it. If you have a fitness tracker or sleep app, it should tell you how much you got. If not, here’s your top tip: As a teen, you needed eight to 10 hours a day ; in early twenties, it’s more like seven or nine.
Clean up early lessons
The number one reason I went to college all the time was, “Oh shit, I forgot it was supposed to be tomorrow.” Reason number two was “I knew it was supposed to be tomorrow, but I kept pushing her away until * checks the clock * tonight.”
If you get to school and work at work, life gets in the way. Shit happens. You have a lot of things competing for your attention and something has to give. Either you are taking the time to study or be honest with yourself about whether this semester is right for school. If you have determined that you have the time, then you need to make to your calendar school hours and school hours and to protect them as a precious treasure.
If you are on a more privileged path and are in a dorm away from your parents for the first time in your life, the temptation to joke is overwhelming. You can have fun and drink every night! You can skip classes and no one will chase you down the hallways! Nobody will force you to do anything, so your study and study time should be limited … by you .
So make sure you know when something needs to be done and work backwards to figure out when your butt should be in the chair: “It will take me so many hours and I have so many days .. . ”Your upcoming commitments, both short-term and long-term. I’m not saying you have to get everything done before the deadline, but try to get some of the work done before you go to bed.
Use caffeine as a remedy, not as a lifestyle
If you are not used to caffeine, then drinking a huge cup of coffee late in the evening will keep you awake and your mind will remain mobile for several hours, possibly even into the morning. This is kind of the perfect way to use it.
But if you drink coffee every night and every morning and drink energy drinks (or even cola, which also has caffeine) in the afternoon, then it won’t work anymore when you need to use it. You dull your sharpest wakefulness instrument.
If you find that you need caffeine all the time, for example to stay awake in class, that means you are not getting enough sleep. (Go back to the step above where we talked about sleep planning and staying ahead of school.)
The Caffeinated Nighttime Magic is a powerful tool if you use it from time to time: a few times a semester, maximum. Not every week, okay?
Keep your phone out of bed
Even if you’re using night mode on your phone or laptop, aiming your eyeballs at a light source is a way to keep you awake. It’s not just light: everything you do on your phone (play games, get angry on social media) keeps your brain awake, too.
So, if you charge your phone by the bed, here’s what happens: you get tired, you flop on your pillow … and then you spend the next hour doing whatever the hell you do on your phone when you’re actually going to sleep. Nobody wakes up and says, “Dude, I wish I had an extra hour on Youtube last night.”
So connect your phone to a place where you can’t reach out of bed. If you need to see the time at night, take your watch or set the app to dim all night. Just keep him out of bed.
Make your room a sleepy place
Adult sleep hygiene focuses on making the bed look like a pleasant, comfortable and sleepy place. However, if you are exhausted all the time, you are more likely to fall asleep as soon as you give yourself the opportunity to close your eyes. But you still don’t want to be woken up or (as is the case with your phone) tempted to postpone bedtime.
Talk to your roommate about when all the light and noise should diminish for the night. If you live in a dorm with a quiet hours policy, this should help. If there is a quiet hour policy but no one follows it, talk to your RA. They are probably trying to balance between following the rules and being a good guy who doesn’t come up in human affairs. Let them know that you really want them to obey the rules at least once, and you will help change that balance a little.
Wake up on weekends
If you want to be able to wake up on Monday at 8am (or even 9am or 10am …), it’s best not to sleep too late on days when you don’t have lessons.
If you signed up for classes at 8 am, ideally you will get up at 7 (or any other time) every day . (This is a good reason not to sign up for classes at 8 a.m.) I find it doesn’t mess up your schedule too much to sleep late one day a week, so maybe the alarm clock on Saturday morning will be later, but try to keep it. the rest of the week is the same.
This does not mean that you have to jump out of bed anxiously to go there every Sunday. Instead, give yourself a pleasant awakening. Maybe bring a blanket to the sofa to watch TV and make yourself a cup of tea. Something calm and relaxing while your eyes are open. Make it what you want to do, and before you know it, you might like to stick to a moderate sleep schedule.