<p>Last semester I had 8 AM classes everyday and I wished I could go to sleep early but I always went to sleep at midnight to 1 AM. Anybody here find it easy to go to sleep at around 10 or 11 and do so on a regular basis?</p>
<p>I sometimes go through spurts of time where I am utterly exhausted and unable to function after ten oclock, but they never manage to last more than a couple weeks. I usually go to bed around 2am. I would sooner cut off my left arm than take an 8am class.</p>
<p>next semester I have 8 AM classes again every morning (not my choosing, just the only time a class fit into my schedule and bad registration draw) so I’m going to experiment with trying to go to bed earlier.</p>
<p>take benedryl? good for both allergies and falling asleep.</p>
<p>I have serious issues with insomnia (will take me 4 hours to fall asleep at the worst), and this usually kicks it out for me.</p>
<p>(it’s a legit issue not falling asleep until 3am when I have work at 7am- I have to drive my car to deliver for work for 2 hours)</p>
<p>lol I wish I could go to bed at midnight-1 am. I’m a hardcore insomniac at school, I usually can’t fall asleep until 3:30ish (even when I know I have a 9 am the next day).</p>
<p>Surprisingly in summer I can fall asleep around 10-11 pm easily because I’m so ridiculously exhausted after 6 hours of classes/labs and then another 2-3 hours of lifting, swimming, and running. (That and I have nothing to do at night because most of my friends don’t live in my time zone)</p>
<p>Best advice would be to go to the gym at night maybe around 8-9 pm so that you can just crash afterwards.</p>
<p>When I have 8am classes I go sleep at 2-3 and wake up fine. You might need to exhaust yourself to get into a sleeping pattern of 10-11 or take sleeping pills.</p>
<p>I go to bed between 10-11 every night. The trick is to get up early (7am) and don’t drink any caffeine during the day (while you’re trying to change your sleeping pattern). Consistently get up between 6 and 7, regardless of when you actually get to bed. Pretty soon, you’ll start getting tired earlier in the evening, so it’s easier to fall asleep at 10. I’d also invest in a good sleep mask that eliminates all light so you can really make sure it’s “light’s out” at 10. </p>
<p>There are really two underlying problems here:
- Most teens (myself excluded) are hardwired to want to go to bed late (1-3am) and sleep through the early morning. </p>
<p>2) Most teens are chronically sleep deprived, so when they do sleep, it’s harder to wake up and get on a schedule. Napping, sleeping through alarms, dozing in class, etc. all mess up your sleep cycle and they’re just symptoms of the larger issue of sleep deprivation.</p>
<p>^Napping by itself does not mess up your sleep cycle, nor is it a symptom of sleep deprivation.</p>
<p>^ It might depend on the duration of the nap. A 30-minute nap may not mess with your sleep schedule, but a 2-hour nap will. </p>
<p>I think ArtemisDea’s advice is solid. The hard part is adjusting to an early sleep schedule. The only way I can personally do this is to get up at the target time, regardless of when I went to bed. Pretty soon I will be so tired during the day that I want to go to bed early. Taking naps sabotages that process.</p>
<p>I go to sleep at 9-10 pm during school, but I have ZERO problems going to sleep. I also wake up at 5-6 without any alarms. It started when I was forced to wake up at 4 AM everyday so that by the time it was 9 I was too tired to have any insomnia.</p>
<p>^^If you are trying to get *acclimated *to a certain sleep schedule, I agree that it might be done easier without taking naps. However, generally speaking, power napping (or napping to full completion of one cycle) is very beneficial and supported by mountains of scientific literature.</p>
<p>I just started a summer internship where I have to be at work at 7:30 AM, in a city 40 minutes away… Previously this summer, I’d just go to bed whenever I was tired. Usually around 2, but as late as 5:30 once or twice. Now, I’m trying to get myself in a sleep schedule of going to bed between 10-11, 11:30 at the very very latest. You just have to set a time where you MUST be in bed (11:30 for me), and just lay there with your eyes closed. Even if you’re not tired, don’t get up or anything. Eventually you’ll fall asleep, and after a few days, your body’s circadian rhythms will catch up to your bedtime.</p>
<p>I used to take several hours to fall asleep too, but apparently I grew out of it within the last six months or so. I spent about a year utterly sleep depriving myself for school until I completely crashed (like doctors begged me to withdraw from school), and once I recovered from that idiocy I came out with semi-normal sleeping habits. It’s funny, I am 21 years old and have a 1am curfew when I am home for summer, and I can’t even complain because I am too tired to drive that late anyway. XD Sometimes getting old’s not so bad! haha. But if I do stay up really late one night, the only way to reset my sleep schedule is to stay up as long as possible and go to bed at like 6pm the next day.</p>
<p>“just lay there with your eyes closed. Even if you’re not tired, don’t get up or anything”</p>
<p>That is actually pretty bad advice for most people. If you don’t have any sleep problems that will work, if you do you are ignoring the problem and frustrating yourself-- keeping yourself awake.</p>
<p>^Exactly. If you have a legit sleeping disorder, you won’t just “fall asleep eventually.” Just laying there can actually spike anxiety levels, making it more difficult to fall asleep.</p>
<p>Well the OP didn’t mention a sleeping disorder, just a need to go to bed earlier for class.</p>
<p>It doesn’t take a sleeping disorder to make lying-in-bed-wide-awake a bad idea. I have tried that a couple of times and ended up awake for several hours each time. I usually fare better when I get up, do something else for an hour and then go back to bed.</p>
<p>Same with me. Lying in bed awake is a bad idea… especially if you are staring at a clock. Then, you get more nervous as you realize the hours passing by. More nervous = not able to sleep.</p>