How to Wake up for Class

With unrelenting stress and eternal sleep deprivation, forcing yourself out of bed in the morning can prove to be quite a difficult task, especially when you need to face yet another day’s workload. Here are a few tips and pointers to keep your attendance points from adding up this next quarter.

1. Go to sleep early. Though this doesn’t seem to happen in the IMSA community, getting sufficient amounts of sleep allows you to wake up without the utter dread associated with mornings. Make your body clock a friend. Figure out how much sleep you need to be able to function efficiently. This time varies from person to person, but keeping a consistent sleep schedule also helps prepare your body.

2. Set 5000 alarms. Setting several alarms before the time you plan to wake up in the morning prepares you to actually have to wake up and ensures that you will wake up to at least one of the alarms, instead of sleeping through class. If you’re an avid Apple user, and have updated to iOS7, you can use the new alert tones to make your alarms go from gentle sounding to loud, blaring, or even annoying. However, don’t get into the habit of turning them all off while you’re unconscious. As you set your alarms, be considerate and keep in mind your roommate’s sleep schedule as well.

3. Adjust your sleep cycles. Use apps/websites such as sleepyti.me, which calculate when you should sleep or wake up so you wake up at the end of a sleep cycle. One sleep cycle lasts for approximately 90 minutes, in which you go through multiple stages of non-REM sleep, each deeper than the last and then you enter REM sleep. Waking up during deep sleep or REM sleep makes waking up more difficult, and leaves you drowsy during the day. The best time to wake up during your sleep cycle is during the initial stages of non-REM sleep, when you are in stages of light sleep, or at the end of REM sleep. This ensures that you are energized during the day and are more inclined to waking up on time in the morning.

4. Keep your blinds open so the morning sun wakes you up. Being exposed to a few hours of sunlight before you wake up prepares you when that dreaded time of morning come along. But you might want to watch out because it’s been said that when you wake up around 2-3am without any reason, there’s a chance that someone is staring at you.

5. Find something you’re excited about, so that you look forward to getting up in the morning. Sometimes, the piles of work and the constant pressure and competition may lay as a burden on your shoulders and weigh you down. Waking up may seem like the sole cause of the extra knots in your shoulders and extra weight on your back. Rekindle your excitement. Find the reason why you do the things you do and use it as a driving force to get out of bed with a smile on your face, so that waking up in the morning is not an inconvenience, but another adventure in your life.

Follow one or multiple of these simple steps, and you’ll be able to wake up for your morning class, no problem.