The life of a college woman is a busy one. No matter where you’re putting your time, having enough energy is essential to give your schoolwork, social life or extracurriculars your all. While it isn’t exactly plausible to apply tips like going to sleep at the same time every night or sleeping 8-10 hours every night, here are some tips I think can help regardless of how jam packed your schedule gets.
1. Get a nighttime routine going
When you feel like you can put down whatever assignment(s) you’ve been working on, have a routine ready that will put your body into sleep mode. Some things I would suggest are dimming the lights, sipping on a hot drink like tea, some gentle stretching or anything else that will help you wind down and relax.
Don’t make it too complicated or unnatural. Just make it consistent, so as you hit the lights your body reacts and starts to get sleepy.
Similarly, if you’re having trouble sleeping you can do the same stretching routine you do before bed, and eventually it will send those same signals to your body that it’s time to rest.
2. Make your room as dark as possible.
Having even a dime size of unnatural light peeking through from a street light or from your computer charger is enough to distract your body from getting the best sleep possible. The darker your room is the better your sleep quality will be. If your curtains aren’t doing the trick, you can purchase black out curtains to block out any possible light from the great outdoors from disturbing your beauty sleep.
3. Sleep between the hours of 10-2!
While I know it is not plausible for us busy college students to sleep from 10-2 every night or any night really, these are the hours when you’re body has its optimal rejuvenation hours. This is why you can go to bed at 3 am and sleep for 10 hours, but still not feel very rested. Even if you can’t get all 4 hours, try to get in some of that magical time period!
4. Aromatherapy!
Lavender is a scent known to relax and calm the body and the mind. Keeping lavender scented lotion to throw on before bed as part of your night time routine is one option! You can even get lavender scented mists to spray either on yourself or your pillows before bed to really feel the effects.
(Kora Organic Lavender Mist)
5. No all-nighters!
I know it is a rite of passage in college to pull your first all-nighter, but I still wouldn’t be able to put a finger down in this hypothetical, very lame game of Never Have I Ever.
While, yes, you can look over information for a test more and for a longer amount of time, you won’t be able to retain the information as well as if you had studied it during the daytime, especially missing out on those prime 10-2 hours. Also, if you are tired the day of a big test, you just simply won’t have the energy to give your all to the test or the rest of the tasks you have to do that day.