Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Why YOU Should Wake Up Early in College

College students seem to endlessly suffer from the inability to wake up early. When I was in high school, apart from falling asleep in class, I rarely heard people complain about having to be at school at 7:30 a.m. Monday - Friday. Now in college, here are a few things I have heard:
  • "I can't take that class until next semester, because now it is only offered at 8:00 a.m. and I would probably fail it."
  • "You have class at 9:30? Wow! My first class is at 2:30 p.m. I wake up between noon and 1:00 p.m. every day."

Does that sound familiar? Probably. It is a shame, but also pretty cool to be honest. 

Things to do todayI guarantee you that if you wake up at 5:00 a.m. or even 6:00, you could walk down your hall and see that practically no one is awake. You could check your Facebook or Twitter and see no posts. You probably aren't getting texts asking to meet up to study or meet for lunch. You will be left alone.

What is a better condition to go get things done? If you can't seem to focus during the day on one of your classes because of so many distractions, what is there to distract you now? It's not even light outside. Imagine being done your assignments for the day, or getting ahead in your classes, or even having laundry done before your roommate even wakes up! 

Look at how much your day can open up if you wake up early. If you can get the nitty gritty things done in the morning, that leaves you time to do all sorts of things, from exercise, hanging out with friends without being nervous of failing classes because you're not studying, or pursuing a new hobby. 

But some people claim that it's just impossible to wake up early. I can't do it, I just go back to sleep, they'll say. Do you know why that is? It's probably a number of things. One, they don't have the right motivation, and two, their sleep schedule won't allow it. 

If your motivation is right, that drive will carry you out of bed in the morning. Knowing you need to finish that paper, or study for that critical exam before other commitments steal your time is motivation for me. You must figure out if waking up early is for you. Weigh out the benefits that you could reap from doing so. 

Now onto another issue, the sleep schedule. If you're like me, you can easily fall into a crappy sleep schedule, where you go to sleep at 1:30 a.m. and cannot wake up until 10 or 11.  It's likely that one day, whether it be your job, role as a parent or spouse, or any number of reasons, that sleeping in until McDonald's breakfast is over probably won't cut it. Why not fix it now? 

Waking up at 5:00 a.m. is easy if you go to bed at 9:30 p.m. You just have to adjust your sleeping schedule to let it happen. From my experience, the way that I fix my sleep schedule into permitting waking up early is to just shock my system and then be consistent. If you're used to going to waking up at 10, just muster up the will power to get out of bed at 5, or whatever time you want one day, and start there. It'll be a tough morning. Grab some coffee. 

During this first day, just try to be productive. Get things done, work out, have a great day so that by night time you just want to drop early. Keep this going for a few days, and it will get easier. Trust me. I started doing this, and after a few days, I was tired and ready for sleep at 9:30 p.m., and woke up 10 minutes before my alarm feeling pretty good the next day.

Waking up early provides some amazing opportunity for productivity. It is definitely a good habit to adopt before you begin your college journey. 

- Taylor

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