By Brandon Ladd

My inability to get out of bed in the morning these past few weeks has led me to start doing research on just why I feel too tired to move before 10:30 a.m. What I found on the internet was helpful and I wanted to share some tips I am adopting to my life. 

Motivation to get out of bed is usually what drives a college student to start their day. Many of us have summer jobs with early hours and have no problem rolling out bed. This was me this past summer working at Walmart from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. and waking up at 6 a.m. to shower. The paycheck was my motivating factor and I never was late for a day of work. 

As soon as I returned back to school though, I found myself getting back into bad habits. Staying up and doing work until 1 a.m. or just scrolling through random Wikipedia pages to entertain myself until 2 a.m. This resulted in me being groggy the following morning and not wanting to move until the afternoon. The desire for a regular midnight until 8:30 a.m. sleep schedule remained a utopian ideal in my mind that I could not achieve. 

I have never been someone who can fall asleep the second my head hits the pillow either. I have always needed about 30 minutes of being in bed before I can actually fall asleep and if I have something important the next day, forget about it. I will toss and turn for hours. So, I decided that it was time to actually look up a new strategy and stop being content with what has been happening. 

Alarm Cycles: 

From my research I found a commonly known mistake that a lot of people make despite knowing it is bad. The infamous snooze button on our phones. The extra nine minutes of sleep this gives is added to our fatigue. Instead, experts suggest that we should set an alarm 90-minutes before having to wake up for real. This “fake” wake-up call is instead used to ensure that a person wakes after completing one last REM cycle instead of during one. This has been shown to be beneficial to the mood in which we start the day. 

Cold Shower: 

My girlfriend and I argue about this topic a lot because I told her early on in our relationship that I am a firm believer in cold showers to start the day, warm showers to end the day. The cold shower is a way for our bodies to sense a temperature change and start working. Some articles even suggested that if you believe the first few steps of the day would be too much, have a cold spray bottle next to the bed. I would not go this far personally, but if it works, it works I guess. 

Routine, Routine, Routine: 

The best thing we can do is try to create the same atmosphere for sleep, each and every night. This means trying to get off your phone an hour before actually wanting to go to bed. It also entails trying to go to bed the same time each night. This is hard for college students who have schedules ranging from 1 a.m. weekend hangouts with friends to 8  a.m. classes on Mondays. So, trying to find that time for yourself and only allowing an exception or two a week will help.