Room mate doesn't wake up or either not want to turn off her alarms! What do I do?

Student Lounge College Life
1

<p>Hi, I hope this is right Forum to put this into...sorry this might be long</p>

<p>I am international student from Greenland and I just started attending my first year at university! Everything is great except for 1 thing...my room mate's waking up schedule..</p>

<p>Don't get me wrong, I get along really well with my roommate! However, i am starting to get frustrated with her "waking up" habits</p>

<p>Here's the thing..she has to leave our room by 8:00 or either 9:00 in morning depending on the day. To wake up she sets 2-3 alarms...one around 7, then 7:15, then 7:30. Doesn't matter the day she ALWAYS sets alarm to wake up at those times. I understand that she has earlier classes than me and that she goes to dining hall to eat breakfast so I don't mind, but the fact that I have to wake up to her alarms and to then wake her up and tell her to turn off her alarms is vexing!
Her alarms is comprised up of really loud music..like it starts out soft then it gets insanely loud. When it goes off, she doesn't seem to hear it!</p>

<p>I give her 10 seconds to turn it off but she is as still as a rock. At that point the music is booming and I'm fully awake. Weird thing is this..once I say her name and say some things like "wake up" to her from my bed, she seems to wake up and then turn her alarm off! I don't know why but it just happens..</p>

<p>I know I would be a person to hit the snooze button too so I wouldn't care if alarm went off and then she turned it off and then went to get a few more minutes of sleep to then get up when she had to ...I get that, but that doesn't happen with her for the majority of the time.</p>

<p>But in honesty, I could be getting an extra hour and a half of sleep (which I need) but I can't since I am literally my room mate's human alarm clock. What might be even more annoying is that once I finally make her conscious, she puts on the snooze button and then for some reason dives into deep sleep again to where she can't hear the alarm go off 15 MINUTES LATER. Therefore I have to wake her up again. Sometimes after all that she continues to sleep in until 8:40, which is when MY alarm clock goes rings.</p>

<p>I try to be as patient as possible but I'm starting to get irritated at this. I try to address this situation to her nicely and she acknowledges it but for some reason she can't do anything about it. I realize she's a deep sleeper but I can't always be monitoring her! What happens if she and/or I get a single room next year at university? How is she going to wake up on her own?</p>

<p>What the heck do I do..? I try to understand that she might not get as much sleep as I do since she has earlier classes than me but I am starting to not get any sleep myself...</p>

<p>HELP</p>

2

<p>squirt her with a water gun when the first alarm goes off!</p>

<p>Actually, TELL HER first that you are going to squirt her with a water gun when the first alarm sounds if she doesn’t turn it off and get up. Then follow through.</p>

3

<p>Actually, as cruel as this ^ suggestion sounds, it’s right on the money. If your roomate’s unconscious brain learns that something unpleasant will follow if she doesn’t wake up she’ll start finding it easy to get herself out of bed.
I did something similar with my kids when they started falling back to sleep after I woke them up. If they didn’t immediately get up I’d pull all the covers off. We live in New England, where the mornings are cold so it was a chilly shock. It only took a couple of days for them to start getting up and staying up on their own.</p>

<p>Your roommate is taking advantage of your patience. I can understand why she’d want to be able to snooze through her alarm, but it isn’t fair to you. I’d tell her you’re willing to wake her up after the alarm goes off but that after the first time you’ll be turning it off (not on snooze). I have no doubt she can find a way to deal with the alarm problem if she really needs to but through your kindness you’ve made it easy for her to avoid finding a solution.</p>

4

<p>You can tell her to get a vibrating alarm clock. She would designate the time and put it on her wrist. It doesnt disturb anyone else in the room.</p>

5

<p>I think both those suggestions are good ones. If she can’t get her act together by winter break, you could talk to the housing office about moving.</p>

6

<p>The first thing you have to do, is to talk to her directly about this.</p>

<p>“Roomie, I want to talk to you about the alarm situation. You have alarms going off at 7, 7:30, 8, but you don’t get up. I get woken up, and have to wake you up. But I don’t need to wake up until later! We need to figure something else out because those alarms are doing nothing except annoying me. So if you need to leave by 9:00, how much time do you need to get ready? Half an hour? Then you should not have an alarm going off any earlier than 8:15.”</p>

<p>See how that goes. If it does not work, then go to your RA. Tell them that you talked to her but still she is setting alarms off that she ignores.</p>

7

<p>Ask her to change the alarm from a song to an actual alarm. Get something that’s so annoying it’ll get both of you out of bed. Then have her set alarms for every minute from 7:00-7:30. She’ll wake up on the 7:00 alarm, and have to turn all of them off if she doesn’t want to hear the annoying sound anymore. She’ll wake herself off while going through the process of turning off the rest of the alarms.</p>

8

<p>I wouldn’t advocate spraying her with water. While it possibly will be effective, it’s not appropriate, and she could easily complain to the RA about it (legitimately). Besides, it doesn’t solve your immediate problem of having to wake up when she does, and is easily extinguished - once you stop doing it she’ll go back to sleeping in.</p>

<p>I like @bopper’s approach</p>

<p>The problem won’t be solved until your roommate can wake up on her own (unless you move out), so I would try to be friendly and help her figure out how to get up when her alarm goes off. Does she go to bed late? It’s hard to get up to a 7 am alarm if you go to sleep at 2 am. You might encourage her to download one of those apps that makes her do math before she can shut the alarm off (you can adjust it for varying levels of math), or place the cell phone across the room so she has to physically get up to shut it off.</p>

9

<p>If the deep sleeper doesn’t hear the alarm, then it leaves the roommate getting up and doing the math or getting up to shut off the alarm. </p>

10

<p>Roommate may SAY she will compromise, but it really may take some natural consequences of oversleeping and missing classes to get RM to actually CHANGE.</p>

<p>Is there a place OP can sleep over somewhere else for a night or two and allow RM to deal with this on her own? Or if OP can stand it for 2-3 mornings, have OP get up when the first alarm goes off and go ahead and dress and leave the room right away. It will cost the OP a bit of sleep for a few days, but hopefully RM can have some natural consequences and realize oversleeping/missing classes is serious stuff.</p>

<p>If OP tries this, it would be kind to notify RM “you are on your own to wake yourself up”.</p>

11

<p>Turn off her alarm clocks when she is sleeping. </p>

<p>Just kidding of course, don’t do that… but the vibrating alarm clock sounds like a great idea.</p>

12

<p>I feel for your room mate. I really do, simply because I have the same problem. I’m a deep sleeper too. It’s a gift and a curse. I highly doubt your room mate wants to irritate you or miss class. If she really does have the same problem as me, than she isn’t in her right mind when you wake her up. She’s not thinking straight because the part of her brain that controls judgement and decision making is still asleep for a few seconds when she wakes up. When my alarm goes off in the morning, all I think is “Kill sound!” and nothing else. Not to mention, she should change her alarm tones frequently, as a deep sleeper will grow accostomed to the sound, despite how loud, and will actually keep on sleeping without even noticing it. Does she have an android phone? If so, I recommend the “I Can’t Wake Up!” alarm clock app. You can set it up to where the alarm won’t stop until you finish a series of puzzles/math problems. That’s been working for me lately. Once again, remind her to change the alarm tone frequently! The key is to keep her awake long enough for the brain to register that this is Earth, and that there are things to do and classes to attend. I hope this was helpful.</p>

13

<p>How is she going to wake up on her own, next year? Well, she’ll learn fast that she either takes the responsibility or misses class. Not your job to mother her. When it wakes you, ignore her, go shower or dress and head for breakfast.</p>

<p>But I realize the problem is also the impact on you. Though I laughed at the water squirt, any chance you can go to bed a bit earlier, so this early wake up has less impact on you? </p>

<p>My D’s freshman roomie (who became a very good friend) had an alarm that whooped like a fire station alarm and got louder. When D2 would say something or shake her shoulder, this gal didn’t wake up. (Plus there were window issues.) My D chose to adapt and the friendship has been worth the effort. Good luck.</p>

14

<p>First, I found myself laughing the whole time I was reading your post. It’s not that I don’t sympathize, it’s that I was in your shoes as a sophomore. I was rooming with a really good friend I made freshman year and he had a serious issue getting up, as well. He had no less than 5 alarms going off, though, and all placed at different locations in the room (he thought having to get-up to turn them off would work but it didn’t). I, like you, would be the one waking up and telling him to wake-up and turn his alarms off. </p>

<p>It continued for probably the first semester before I began kicking him and pulling his sheets off (I don’t recommend this unless you’re good friends, lol). Enough kicking and sheet pulling lead to him eventually needing only two alarms and much less persuasion to get-up. </p>

<p>So, my suggestion? She needs something different than you waking her up. The vibrating alarm sounds good, you letting her sleep through her alarms and miss classes sounds good, or you (with her permission) pulling-off her sheets or something also sounds good.</p>

<p>Good luck! I definitely feel for ya!</p>