You Ask, She Answers: How do I stay awake in class?

“HELP! I am having such trouble staying awake in my early morning lecture classes! Any advice?”

As a victim of this myself, I have learned a few tricks over the years. Try a few (or all) of these until your sleep schedule gets a little bit more acclamated to those 8 am (or 9 am or 10 am) classes:

Sit in the back of the class. This may sound counter-intuitive at first because if you sit in the back it makes it easier to sleep, right? Well, in my experience if I am dozing off it doesn’t matter how interested in the topic I am or where I am sitting – I am sleepy and that is that.  But if you’re sitting in the back of the classroom it will make it a little bit easier to sneak out of class for a moment or two. It turns out, the cold weather we’ve been having lately can work in your favor. Just stand up, leave everything on your desk just as it is, forget your jacket and subject yourself to our fabulous January weather for a moment or two. That cold shock leads me to my next point…

At 8 am that nice warm cup of coffee can be rather counter-productive. The nice warm beverage in a nice warm classroom right after you walked all the way to campus simply leads to more drowsiness until the caffeine kicks in about a half hour later. So I suggest drinking iced coffee beverages. For my money I love Thai Iced coffee; typically it is under two bucks and deliciously sweet. The con here though is that not a lot of places make it on campus. As far as I know, only The Buzz on the lowest level of the EMU sells it. Sweet Basil Express over on Alder makes it the traditional way, but make sure you bring cash if that is all you plan on ordering, they charge for using a credit card under a certain amount (I think $5?).
 
If you’re trying to cut down on your caffeine intake, a water bottle full of ice water helps just as well to combat those warm classroom and droning teacher snoozes. Luckily, because of the “Take Back the Tap” movement, there are plenty of water bottle filling stations around campus that are quite chilly.

 
You can also try taking notes using different colored pens to help you focus on the lecture. For example, red for the title of the slide, blue for the content of the slide and then black for whatever the professor says in addition to the slide. It is a slower note taking process, but the act of picking out the correct pen for the correct notes makes you think a little bit harder.

I’ve also heard of people chewing gum and bouncing their legs up and down to stay awake, however, both of these practices should be used only in emergency situations as they can be highly distracting and irritating to your fellow drowsy classmates.

In truth the only way to get lasting results is to play around with your sleeping and workout schedule to see what gets you the best quality sleep at night.  Hopefully my little tricks will get you through those awkward first few weeks of the term until you’ve settled into a workable routine.

Photo Credit:
liberty.edu
theeyeopener.com