It seems to me that, as many students enter the university and “college life,” sleep becomes a notoriously neglected need. While academic demands can understandably take the place of a good night’s rest, those eight to nine hours are discarded far too freely in my taste. It is essential for a fully functional mind and a healthy body that a healthy night’s sleep be achieved.

​

I often hear from tired students that they “simply can’t” go to sleep early. They lie in bed, nothing happens and they give up on themselves. As an extreme sleep enthusiast, I’d like to share a few tips and tricks concerning getting what you really need in bed: nine hours of sleep.

​

The first step to getting a lot of sleep is scheduling a bedtime. While I strongly urge aiming to hit the hay by 9:00 p.m., this is pretty far from realistic as a starting point. At any rate, there are two important criteria concerning a healthy bedtime:

​

1. Consistency is essential. The human brain is always searching for patterns, and a regular sleep/wake schedule is a big step towards falling asleep easily and waking up gracefully.

​

2. Earlier is better. Eight hours of sleep from 1:00 to 9:00 are not nearly as refreshing as eight hours from 10:00 to 6:00, and achieving deep sleep after sunrise is nearly impossible.

​

Once you’ve scheduled your appointment, the next step is to attend it by going to bed. For those who are used to simply collapsing with fatigue in the early morning, sleeping before you really need it is going to be an unusual change. There are those who interpret the failure to immediately succumb to exhaustion as the body’s abject refusal to cooperate, but this is simply untrue.

​

Find a comfortable position (sleeping on your back is best for your health, but stomach and side sleeping works fine too!), and hold still. Put your phone away, turn the TV off and relax in darkness. I personally am a fan of listening to music while I sleep, but music can easily prevent sleep as well. Make sure that the sound is very low; you shouldn’t be able to hear it over the rustling of your covers if you move, and you shouldn’t be able to pick out any specific words in the music.

​

If you follow these steps, you’ll be sure to patiently fall asleep, whether you realize it or not. This is another trick that the brain plays which can deceive potential sleepers into hopelessness; it’s easy to fall asleep without realizing it at first. It’s easy to check the time and observe that quite a lot has passed without any success. Let me tell you what actually happens. It’s possible to drift into the early stages of sleep without actually recognizing it, and then to move back towards consciousness just to check the time. While it may seem that hours have passed without any luck, you’ve simply resurfaced without realizing that you were gone in the first place. Trust me--you fell asleep. My solution to this phenomenon is simply to not keep a timepiece near the bed so that I can’t deceive myself.

​

While catching a healthy amount of sleep may not be conducive to a beer-blasting, hard-partying, lifestyle, the academic advantages to having the keen edge and quick sensibilities of a good night’s sleep are extremely pronounced.

​

When regularly practiced, healthy sleeping habits can keep you at your best, at your happiest.