Good news, there are free or extremely cheap ways to make sure you never arrive to class sleep deprived, pull an all-nighter trying to finish an essay on time or spend time cramming for an exam.
3) Alarms (set to the same time every day)
Remember Monday mornings in high school when everyone would shuffle into classrooms without an ounce of energy? It doesn't take a genius to figure out why. If you wake up at 10 a.m. on weekends, it's going to be hell to wake up at 7 a.m. the next day. Now multiply that times a thousand and you will have an idea of what 8 a.m. college classes are like.
Here is the problem, even if you purposely try to register for morning classes, odds are that the classes you need aren't available at the same time. This is the main problem. You may have a 8 a.m. class on Tuesdays and Thursdays but 11 a.m. classes on Mondays and Wednesdays. College classes meet either twice per week for one hour and fifteen minutes, or once per week for two hours and forty minutes.
Believe it or not, it is actually easier to wake up at 7 a.m. daily than to do it every other day. Let me explain, the human body is remarkably adaptable to patterns. This is why you have to exercise or diet more to lose the last ten pounds than to lose the first 15. This is also why waking up for school on Monday was hell compared to waking up for school on Friday. Your body had four days to reorganize you REM sleep cycle.
But when you decide to sleep in on the weekends, you are destroying your sleep cycle. I'm not making this up. This explains why traveling to other time zones can lead to insomnia. Or why losing an hour during Daylights savings increases traffic collisions (hint: losing an hour of sleep is similar to driving drunk).
Here's how you can easily solve this: wake up at the same time every day. I know, I know, everyone loves sleeping in. But take a look at this:
Yes, I wake up at 6:30 a.m. every day. It works for me because I have morning classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I go to my internship on Wednesdays and Fridays. So what do I do the rest of the week? On Mondays, I go early to college to catch up on homework. And on the weekends, I have an extra hour to get ready for work.
I know what you're thinking, "I like to stay up all night, go to parties, or study until 3 a.m. and I could never function on so little sleep."
From personal experience, I can tell you that two things will happen: One, it will become so easy to wake up at the same time, you may not need the alarm after a month or two. And two, if you stay out the night before, your body will make up the difference the next night.
I stayed up until 1 a.m. last month on a Saturday to watch UFC 158 with my friends. I woke up the next day at 6:30 a.m. feeling rested and ready for work. But fast-forward to 9 p.m. and I couldn't keep my eyes for the life of me. I slept almost nine hours that night.
You don't have to take my word for it. Try it out for a couple of weeks. It is shockingly easy to fall into a schedule.
2) Calendars (with reminders/countdowns)
How long would it take you to read a short story, research it, write a eight-page paper and proof read it? For me, it's about a month. Two weeks to read it and re-read it. One week to collect journals, essays, background information, etc.. And one weekend to write it and proof-read it. Luckily, there's an App for that:
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So my paper is due on April 23, I'm writing it over this weekend and proof-reading Monday morning. Today, I'm starting to collect reviews, analysis and critiques of Mario Vargas Llosa's metaphysical "Letters to a Young Writer". I spend the previous two weeks reading it, dissecting its style and looking for quotes.
But this is all about you. How long does it take you to prepare for a midterm? If it covers X amount of chapters, you want X amount of days. Then you want a days to go over everything you didn't understand. And if your professor has a review day, make sure to be done with your reading before then.
1) Index Cards (they will save your life)
Why do we study before a final? We have gone through the lessons, done homework and had quizzes along the way. Paradoxically, the students who pay the most attention in class spend the most time studying.
The answer, of course, is that we cannot possibly retain an entire semester's worth of information. So we study the week (or night) before in hopes of retaining most of the information for at least a day. The day of the final.
But there is an easier way to memorize all of the information needed: index card.
For the purposes of this blog, let's say you have to memorize the 50 states and capitals. Write each state on one side and the capital on the other. Here is the trick: make two piles, one for the ones you know (weekly) and one for the ones you don't (daily). Over the next six days, try the now much smaller daily pile, if you remember the states, move them to the weekly pile. The following week, try the now larger weekly pile, the states you remember, move to a third pile (monthly). Repeat this process for a month or until all cards are moved to the monthly pile (hint: it will not take you a month).
This process is called the Leitner System and it works for every subject. You are trying to figure out how long your brain can retain information (days, weeks or months) and study accordingly. You can remember Albany more easily that Pierre, so study Pierre more often that Albany. Not only do you have more time to study, you have much less to study.
Here is a graph to help you out:
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