Tired all the time? No patience left? Blink and it’s suddenly 3am? Want to clock seven or eight hours every night, but it’s just not happening?
I feel you. The dual powers of procrastination and distraction provided by college are perhaps the least conducive to recharging your batteries. There’s always something going on, and for those of us with FOMO or five papers, sleep gets shoved to the bottom of the priorities list.
But never fear! As a person who really values her alone time, especially in regards to sleep, I’ve tried just about everything and have compiled a list of the things I’ve found work best for combating sleep-deprivation in the college world.
Go to bed and wake up on a consistent schedule. The biggest key to sleep stability is to aim for a regular schedule, even on the weekends. This semester, I’m lucky enough to have my first class at 1pm three days a week, but I’m usually still awake by 9:45am regardless. The human body craves routine– even though I don’t technically have to be up, my body refuses to go back to sleep because I’d already be on my way to class at that time on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s amazing how your body can do this (basically on its own) if you stick to a schedule.
If that’s not possible, use a sleep cycle app. Seriously, I thought this was going to be a load of crap, but I was shocked at how well it worked. If you’re not able to stick to a schedule, or need to deviate from your normal routine, a website like https://sleepcalculator.com/ is a life-changer. I had to get up much earlier than normal one day last week. I plugged in my desired wake-up time and this website spit out the optimal times to go to sleep so that I would wake up in between sleep cycles. Waking up in the middle of a dream/REM sleep leaves you groggy and is an all-around terrible experience. I couldn’t recommend this more.
Unwind before bed. Read for pleasure, make a cup of tea, or catch up on your self-care by treating yourself to an at-home facial or footbath. Honestly, doing stuff like this with the lights dimmed/low is a great way to get in the mood to sleep.
Take a power nap. But be careful! There is a science to napping properly. A 10-20 minute nap is often all your body needs to recharge. But if you’re really exhausted or failed to get enough sleep the night before, shoot for a 90 minute nap. 90 minutes is one full REM cycle. Anything longer than that will probably leave you more exhausted than you started. Also, naps between 20 and 90 minutes will cause you to wake up in the middle of your sleep cycle– and as stated above, that could make you groggier. And also, aim for between 1-4pm for naps. Sleeping after 4pm can absolutely mess up your nighttime routine, and there’s nothing worse than getting stuck in a cyclical pattern where your late-afternoon naps become the cause of your inability to fall asleep each night.
Make sure you’re doing things during the day that actually make you tired. If you lay around all day, you’ll only get more antsy come bedtime. While intellectual stimulation is constant in college, and can be draining in its own way, exhaustion from your brain is not the same as exhaustion from your body. Work out, dance around your room, walk the quad, go to Nerf Club, take a field trip out of Oxford… even low-impact movement can be the difference between falling asleep easily and tossing and turning all night.
If you can’t fall asleep, try to figure out the cause. If you’re light or sound sensitive, the difference between sleeping and a restless night can be as simple as investing in blackout curtains, a sleep mask, or ear plugs. I never knew the extent of my light sensitivity until I bought blackout curtains for my dorm. At home, I can’t ever sleep past 9am (no matter what time I go to sleep) because the light wakes me up. With the curtains, I’ve slept as late as 1pm. Best thing I’ve ever done.
And if all else fails, get out of bed, walk around for twenty minutes, and try again. The absolute worst thing you can do is lay in bed trying to fall asleep and failing. Sleep psychology seems to say that if you associate your bed with sleep and only sleep, that’s what you’ll want to do while there. If you do spend an inordinate amount of your day there, do homework there, or toss and turn for hours, your brain might forget what your bed is actually for.