With midterms being upon us this week, a majority of students at the University of Connecticut have become strangers to good sleep. Whether it be working on projects or studying that’s keeping us up into or past the wee hours of the morning, most of our sleep schedules will be completely messed up by the end of this busy week. Personally, it’s looking like five hours of sleep at max for me, sleeping between 3 a.m. and 8 a.m. Some of you are likely to have it worse. Either way, when the dust settles, we’ll all want a quick solution to get back to glorious 8-hour sleep during normal times.
I have a quick solution to fix your sleep schedule. It is not the only solution, but it surely is a solution that has consistently worked for me. In fact, I used it last Friday after finishing a paper. It’s extremely simple but before I say anything about it, I need to preface with a huge disclaimer: I’m not a medical professional nor even a med student. I study English, which may indicate a propensity for ill-advised decisions, so take everything I’m going to write here with a grain of salt.
With that out of the way, the method is this: Pull an all-nighter and stay awake until 8 p.m. the next day. As I said, extremely simple — and I’ll add intuitive. 8 p.m. is a great time because not only are you guaranteed to instantly collapse by then, but it’s also early enough to adjust for a later desired bedtime: it’s much easier to adjust to falling asleep later than falling asleep sooner. It is relatively quick in comparison to more careful methods, taking less than two whole days to reset your sleep schedule. It’s a simple and quick solution, but it’s also a dirty one.
You cannot, under any circumstances, lie in a bed or sit on a comfy couch or chair after 7-8 a.m. Your eyes will start shutting on their own and before you know it, you’re out like a light and your schedule will be even more messed up. Sitting in an uncomfortable chair is the best way to go, but you will still be routinely terrorized by microsleep, falling asleep for mere seconds of a time, which can be extremely disorienting. It is even more disorienting when you’re in public. Although you are encouraged to fight the sleep now, in order to prevent potential embarrassment, this encouragement quickly turns into paranoia and it starts to seem like everyone is watching you. Soon after, this paranoia mixes with a disturbing awareness that not only is no one watching you, but no one even knows the incredibly stupid thing you’re putting yourself through. It’s okay, however, because by the time you reach this point in the day, it will be time to get sweet rest.
And it is sweet rest for two reasons: the first being that sleeping for more than 10 hours in one go is just viscerally satisfying, it’s almost impressive that you were out for that long. The second reason is that sweet dreams visit during sweet rest. Sweet dreams for me can sometimes be sweet memories. One of my most fitting ones is from middle school, when my social studies teacher laid out the truth about what to expect from a college workload: “there are going to be nights where you don’t get any sleep.” At the time my twelve-year-old mind didn’t understand why he had said that with a thousand-yard stare. I simply thought to myself, “Staying up late is pretty cool actually.” What a sweet, innocent dream that was.