I probably don't have to say that getting sleep in college is HARD. Sometimes it's assignments, upcoming exams, and sometimes it's the urge to doom-scroll Instagram or YouTube Shorts at 1:00 AM. I'm very guilty of doom-scrolling under the covers of my top-bunk bed. Maybe it's the sudden freedom from parents, perhaps it's the fact that many of my friends are going to be awake for the next three hours because of time zone differences, and I want to be there for the late-night discord conversations. Now, I found I was fatigued, unable to stay awake in class. Every. Single. Day. Whether it was three hours of sleep or ten hours, I would be zoned out.
Randomly I decided to start listening to podcasts, and I found, like many others, TRS, or The Ranveer Show (not sponsored) His latest podcast was one about sleep at the time, and I took a listen and one idea stuck with me.
"Alarms are the worst"
This didn't make complete sense to me, because I needed alarms to wake up for my classes. But I decided to give it a try, and I set my alarms for the absolute LATEST I could wake up for classes (10:30 AM for 11:30 AM classes, etc.). Then, even if I woke up at 6:00 AM, and felt relatively functional, I would just wake up.
The crazy thing is: it worked.
I felt more energetic, even with less sleep, and overall happier and less stressed. The idea is that an alarm disrupts your sleep cycle (each cycle lasting about 90 minutes), and therefore your sleep quality isn't great (PSA: I'm not a doctor so... yeah). So if you just wake up according to your body's cycle, you're all good.
This gave me a great excuse to go to the gym in the morning, because I hated going at 10pm, the only other time that it was relatively empty. (Side story: Purdue's Co-Rec is basically a local gym since West Lafayette is a quite small town).
This also means I have an excuse to "delay" when I sleep when I want to wake up at a certain time, so that the hours I sleep are a multiple of 1.5.
I hope this works for other struggling college students out there, especially around exam week. And go get some exercise if you haven't been active, it makes a world's difference.