The majority of college students don’t get a healthy amount of sleep. With busy schedules and a lot of time-consuming activities like homework and extracurriculars, it makes sense that students sacrifice the precious time they could use to sleep. Even though it’s sometimes impossible to keep up with all the things life throws at you, you should never sacrifice your sleep to do so. Maintaining a sleeping schedule is key to making sure you’re getting a healthy amount of rest each night.
Going to sleep and waking up at a similar time each day is key to maintaining your sleeping schedule. Just because you have an 8 am lecture two days out of the week and a 2 pm lecture the other three days doesn’t mean you should sleep in for a few extra hours. You could give or take an extra hour, but you shouldn’t be confusing your body by waking up at extremely early one day and waking up at noon the next day.
This also applies to the weekend. Just because it feels great to stay in bed and wake up late doesn’t mean you should. Not only does it confuse your body and mess up your sleeping schedule, but it also decreases your productivity. Think of all the things you could get done by waking up at a reasonable time instead of at noon. It may be hard at first, but you’ll thank yourself later after you see how productive your mornings could be by waking up at a reasonable hour.
In order to wake up early, you should also be going to sleep early. While waking up early may be hard, going to sleep early is a bit easier to do. Considering how sleep-deprived most college students are, going to sleep a few hours earlier is basically considered a luxury. If you find it difficult to go to sleep earlier than usual, try to wind down by taking a shower, reading, or watching an episode of your current Netflix/Hulu binge.
Even though it may be hard to change your sleeping schedule, it is important to change it in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle. You should never have to sacrifice your sleep.
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