Students often find it hard to develop and follow a strict sleep schedule during their exams. It could either be due to spending an aggressive amount of time studying or due to suffering from stress and low-quality sleep. In either case, the student suffers from negatively affected performance.
If you want to do your best during exams and achieve the desired grades, it’s crucial to pay attention to your sleeping habits and sleep peacefully during your rest hours. To help you tackle the stressful situation of exam sessions, here are 5 tips for you to sleep peacefully.
Develop a schedule — and stick to it
The majority of students often make the mistake of not having a solid sleep-study schedule — and that’s a horrible way to handle the exam session. According to various pieces of research, the human brain best absorbs and retains new information when it has had enough sleep.
If you consistently force yourself to not sleep and study for the most amount of time, you’d be massively less efficient with your studies. You’d have difficulty learning your subjects and retaining the information in your mind.
The best way to counter the problem is to develop a schedule for your sleep and study periods — and then stick to it at all costs. Make sure to get enough sleep to give the necessary rest to your brain so it can stay sharp.
Medical students are a common victim of low-quality sleep schedules due to the high number of challenging subjects they have to study. Moreover, challenging exams like NCLEX RN put extra pressure on these students. No matter how hard an exam is, you must always develop and stick to your sleep schedule. If you don’t, you’re already at a disadvantage because your brain isn’t working at its maximum capacity.
Sleep in a comfortable environment
If you spend your precious sleep time in an uncomfortable, noisy environment, you’d suffer from lower-quality sleep which won’t do much good for your mental stability. To make the most out of your sleeping hours, find yourself a comfortable environment where you won’t get disturbed every several minutes. Moreover, keep your bedding soft and comfortable. Some people might study and sleep in the same room, but it would be better to separate these two activities and do them in different places. For example, you could attend co-working spaces to study during the day and then return home to sleep calmly.
Leave your worries behind before going to bed
Many students keep worrying about the tiresome amount of syllabus they have to cover, even when they’re on the bed. Never do that! Remember, your sleep directly affects your performance in the exams, as well as in your entire academic career.
Let yourself be free of the worries during the sleep hours. Admire your precious sleep time and make the most out of it.
Take a healthy diet — and take it on time
If you’re lacking in the diet, your body is automatically destined to suffer from reduced performance and efficiency. Moreover, your sleep quality will suffer if you’re not having enough nutrients.
Never skip out on your regular diet plans. Don’t take too much caffeine. Refrain from taking a lot of fizzy drinks. Regularly take healthy eatables like fruits, milk, grain, and meat.
Stay away from blue light
The screen of every computer device like phones, tablets, and laptops, emits blue light that hinders your ability to sleep well. The blue light activates the release of your waking hormone, called cortisol, and reduces the quality of your sleep.
To fix this problem, make sure to turn off your device around 30 minutes before you’re planning to go to bed. If you can’t afford to waste these 30 minutes, turn on the blue light filter of your device’s screen.
Final thoughts
Quality sleep is crucial for students to perform their best in the exams. But due to high levels of stress, students often can’t sleep peacefully during their exam sessions. Follow the above-mentioned tips and you’ll set yourself up for high-quality peaceful sleep, enabling you to be at your sharpest while you’re at the exam hall.
Our Sleep Education Center, a patient education section of this website created by Alaska Sleep Clinic, provides information about various sleep disorders, the forms of treatment available, recent news on the topic of sleep, sleep studies that have been conducted and a listing of sleep facilities.
Those who believe they have a sleep disorder should consult with their primary care physician or one of our board-certified sleep specialists at ASC.
