Clearly I'm decent-attacking my sleep schedule

[zetorux]

^ yeah, that was lame.

Anyway, it's roughly midnight on Saturday (As in, the day just fucking started), and my OS final is at 8:30 AM on Monday. I've been waking up at 5:30 PM lately and falling asleep around 8 AM lately. Of the following, what should I do?

1) Shift back 11 hours

I could stay awake for a really long time (perhaps with a

Comments

[twinofmunin]

my suggestion is that you definitely sleep "enough" before the 410 final, and have breakfast beforehand. make sure you leave enough time between waking up and the final to allow your brain to spin up into functional mode, however long that takes you.
you may also want to look into melatonin for trying to help your sleep schedule; i am told that taking such at a bedtime sort of time after sundown can be helpful for a lot of people in shifting their schedule back. (not to be taken on an ongoing basis, of course, or i suspect you'll diq your body's melatonin production, though i could be wrong; should be fine for a few days or so.)

the final will be of the same form factor as the midterm, and it is my experience with 410 tests that having slept is a better idea than last-minute cramming, though that isn't the question you were asking.

*considers posting some of this to the bboard, since 410 students keep asking her how to study*

[twinofmunin]

also, even if you're tired [due to staying up or whatever], spending the last hour or so right before you sleep looking over the material is also a good idea -- you've probably heard this already, but studying material right before sleep is usually quite effective. maybe study some more boring stuff like reading over slides instead of thinking too hard about race conditions whilst off-kilter, but yeah, should be helpful.

[zetorux]

Cool, thanks :)

About possibly not producing enough melatonin -- yeah, that wouldn't surprise me. I don't really go outside very often. (I'm turning into a Simon! :P) I should probably change that...

And breakfast sounds like a very good idea.

[insane_bassist]

I'd try number one. Maybe have some caffeine while you're trying to study, although not too much 'cause that'd throw off your cycle even more. I just think that's the easiest way to adjust.

[zetorux]

"And by the way, caffeine is cheating; I'm not going to be using that."

Nope. :-P

Although I seem to be doing something close to #1 right now. I got up at 11:00 today. Hopefully I'll be able to wake up even earlier tomorrow, and then ~6:30 won't feel so unnatural for Monday.

[insane_bassist]

Well that works, even though the no caffeine thing is weird to me... :3

[joshua_]

-Decent

[zetorux]

[zetorux]

Wait, what the fuck

The tick mark should be on the other side (since I was falling asleep and waking up way too late)

Unless I was so late that it wrapped around and I got a decent on the next "note." Come to think of it, that's probably what happened.

[vertex2_squared]

Haha, I did option # 2 for the 213 final and I did really well on it for some reason, and I thought I'd bomb it. But I'd like to add option # 4: Nyquil or lots of Sominex.

[zetorux]

Eh, I don't like the idea of taking stuff to force myself to fall asleep any more than I like the idea of taking stuff to force myself to stay awake.