I’m sure many students would relate to the fact that I have spent the last two years desperately wishing I was a natural early bird, that I could wake up at the crack of dawn feeling refreshed and ready for the day, but alas, the truth could not be further. By the end of last semester, I was waking up at 11am at the earliest, sleeping away mornings that I could have used productively or leisurely. I was growing increasingly frustrated that I was wide awake until the early hours of the morning, then opening my eyes to gleaming sunlight and simply wanting to close them again out of exhaustion.
Generally speaking, I’m an enthusiastic, motivated student- I attend my classes, meet my deadlines, and do all the reading. But my body clock was well and truly broken, and I couldn’t figure out quite why I found it so difficult to get out of bed at a reasonable hour. Thankfully, I have finally cracked it. And I want to share the things that have finally brought my sleep schedule under control and allowed me to
experience every day to a fuller extent.
Let’s start by being realistic: if you currently wake up no earlier than 10am, and you set your alarm for 7am tomorrow morning with the plan to start studying by 8am, it won’t happen. I’ve been there- a sudden rush of motivation to become an early riser leads to overambitious lifestyle changes from a version of you that, when that alarm goes of at the crack of dawn, will be sorely detested. Don’t think you will go from waking at near noon to being up and ready by sunrise; it will just make you feel terrible about yourself, and you’ll go back to sleeping in as usual.
My more achievable suggestion would be to make social plans for the mornings. Plan a coffee date with a friend for 9am- this will force you to get up, but you won’t mind too much, as you’re waking up for something enjoyable. Plus, you’ll let your friend down if you fail to show; the accountability there can be a really helpful motivator in pushing you to wake up earlier. After doing this consistently, you’ll begin to find your body naturally adjusts to getting up that little bit earlier, and it will eventually get easier and easier. Secondly, the age-old piece of advice, drink more water. Trust me. It’s easy to remember to wake up and hydrate, but making sure you drink water in the evenings will help you wake up feeling refreshed.
Obviously, getting up earlier will likely mean you need to fix the time you are going to sleep. This is slightly trickier- but ultimately, if you’ve been awake earlier, you’ll feel ready for bed earlier, so it may just be a case of biting the bullet for a few days with less sleep than desirable to force yourself into a more regular sleep pattern. A big development for me has been reassessing my relationship with caffeine; opting for decaf and drinking less coffee in general has had huge benefits for not just the time I sleep, but the quality of the sleep itself. I’m finding I’m sleeping less but waking up feeling far more energised and ready for the day. This brings me to the interesting paradox, but nevertheless one proven by healthcare professionals: you can sleep too much. Ten, eleven, even twelve hours of sleep may sound appealing, but in the long term, it is too much, and will convolutedly make you feel more tired. Somewhere between seven and nine hours is recommended- but everyone is different, and you have to find what works for you.
It’s all too tempting as a student with a very flexible and independent schedule to dedicate far too much time to sleeping. The nice thing about the student lifestyle is you don’t have to get up at 6am. But if, like me, you feel like you’ve been missing your mornings, and wasting half of the day, then I’d suggest gradually implementing changes to your lifestyle to help you readjust to a more regular sleep pattern and fix your natural body clock.
“Alarm Clock 3” by Alan Cleaver is licensed under CC BY 2.0.