There is a stereotype of college students staying up all night and sleeping all day, and that is honestly really true. I am no stranger to staying up way too late either because of an assignment or from hanging out with my friends. For the most part, it’s expected for young adults like us to stay up a little later and sleep in a little bit. But that lifestyle can easily get out of hand and keep you from doing any of the stuff you wanna do. So I’ve been experimenting with a few different ways to keep my sleep in check, and the results have varied pretty greatly depending on the method.

Method 1: Scheduling Early Morning Classes
So this is one that I’ve used since my first semester at Iowa. It makes a lot of sense – make a schedule that forces you to get up early, and you’ll have no choice but to frame your day in a way that encourages a healthy sleep cycle. For me, I’ve seen some success with this method, but something very important I’ve learned is that you do NOT want to overdo it. Definitely take some morning classes (in a lot of cases, you’ll have to) but do not load your entire day so that you’re done with classes before noon. When I’ve done this, I ended up using a lot of that afternoon’s free time to just go back to my dorm and take naps. Also, you’ll get really sick of having to miss every social event because you need to be in bed super early every night. My advice: Try to have an early class every other day, and make that early class not too early (9:30’s or 10:30’s are the sweet spots).

Method 2: Output in the Morning, Input at Night
The idea behind this one is that you do your hard tasks, or the things that you have to do, early in the day, and you do the fun or relaxing things towards the end of the day. This helps keep you from a bunch of late nights where you’re glued to your desk, doing your assignments. My problem with this one is that I’ve found it to be hard to regulate. I procrastinate a lot, so it feels unnatural to do things early when I know I could just do them later. I think to get this one to work you need a strong mindset switch, and that’s just something that takes some time to develop.

Method 3: Nighttime Routines
This is one I’ve started doing recently and have had a lot of success with. Every night, when I know that I should be going to bed soon, I turn off the main light in my room and turn on my lamp. Then I light a candle and make some tea, and do whatever it is I want to do for a half hour or so before going to bed. The idea behind this is that by doing this every night, my body starts to recognize the smell of the candle, the taste of the tea, and the dimmer lighting, and realizes that it’s bedtime. Then I become too tired to stay up wasting my time on my phone. It has worked really well for me so far this semester, but I’ll have to keep playing around with it to see if I can keep it up in the later half of the semester.