Most publications and blogs that cater to students will eventually run an article on how to stay awake during class. They offer (sometimes) valuable advice on getting enough sleep, avoiding all-nighters, using caffeine intelligently, cutting down on sugar, etc. I won’t go into details here, because we may decide to run an article of our own

In this article, I will focus less on preventing classroom catnaps, and instead talk about what to do after you wake up. Because let’s face it: some of us can’t do anything about our sleep schedule without cutting into study time, extra-curriculars, or aspects of our social life that are important to us. We know that we are sleep-deprived, but sometimes we can’t do anything about it. We even fall asleep in classes that we love most, sometimes during the lull between two exciting parts of the lecture. If you are like me, and you know that sleeping better and changing your diet isn’t enough, then it’s important that you master the ability to recover from an episode of classroom catnap.

First, a few words on my experience. I’m in my fourth year of college at a very large public university, with three majors and a minor, and since the beginning of sophomore year I have been notorious for sleeping in classes. Here’s the kicker: my professors still like me, and are willing to help. Well, most of them anyway. And it has nothing to do with the kind of grades that I get.

I have a lot of wonderful friends who are excellent students, and every now and then one of them will call me up to ask what they should do, because they either: A) fell asleep in lecture B) overslept and disrupted the class by showing up thirty minutes late C) slept through an exam. In all three cases, their first instinct as to what they should do is usually wrong.

After literally years of experience sleeping in virtually every class, I have developed my very own standard operating procedure (SOP) for coping with the fallout from a classroom catnap. But before I go on, I want to make it very clear what this strategy will and will not do for you.

This strategy will not help you sleep less in class. It won’t help you learn the material you missed, or get stellar grades on tests. It won’t turn you into some slick talker who can convince your professor to give you an A and the shirt on his or her back.

This strategy will help you limit the damage sustained to your reputation from your nap. Very often in college, especially as you get to the upper-level courses, maintaining a good image in the eyes of your professor is an important part of taking a class. In extreme cases, you may care more about whether the professor likes you and thinks you are bright than you do about whether he gives you an A or a B (I’m thinking here about recommendations for postgraduate study, jobs, and scholarships). But even if it’s “just some class with some old professor”, you will feel far less comfortable going to office hours and asking for advice if you feel that you have antagonized your professor (and he or she will be less likely to go the extra mile when providing help and giving much-needed breaks and extensions).

So, without further ado, I present my SOP (patent pending).

1. Open your eyes. Taking long naps is pushing it. The last thing you want to do is start snoring — there’s no forgiveness for snoring in class! Even if you don’t normally snore, when you are on two hours of sleep for the better part of a week, the odds are against you. I learned this the hard way last year.
2. Make eye contact with the teacher immediately, and offer some kind of facial expression. Whether it’s a smile or a wince, all you want to do is indicate that you are embarrassed.
3. Sit up in your seat, with your back straight. For bonus points, lean forward as if you are intensely interested in what’s on the blackboard.
4. Give yourself a few moments to get your bearings. Then, ask the first semi-intelligent question that comes to your mind. Don’t waste everyone’s time, but don’t worry about being wrong either. Your purpose here is to show your professor that you care. If you are stuck here, questions of the form “Professor, I just want to make sure I have everything right: you said x,y,z just a little while ago” are always an option, especially if you are in a lecture that requires taking a lot of notes.
5. Whatever you do, don’t try to act smart by making a pedantic observation or correcting the professor. This will earn you the disdain of both your professor and your classmates. Just don’t do it. On the other hand, if by some miracle you do have a bright idea that actually contributes to the discussion and/or lecture, do share it. It’s always impressive when someone can wake up and immediately join in on the discussion.
6. If you didn’t get to ask a question, then answer one. If your professor asks for hands, volunteer yourself. Unless you are exceptionally bright, or the class is remedial, you will probably be wrong. Perhaps you’ll be horribly wrong. But that’s okay — you’ve just shown the professor that you want to participate, despite your sleeping problem.
7. This should go without saying, but try to get the missing notes from a friend or neighbor.
8. Careful: this won’t work with every professor. If you don’t plan on keeping in touch with this professor after the class ends, you may want to skip this step. I always do it for all my professors. After class, go up to your professor and wait for the students who are busy sucking up to conclude their business. Then, apologize to your professor for sleeping in class. 90% of the time, your professor will respond by saying “I know, I saw.” When this happens, you will be very glad that you chose to speak with him or her. You have two options now. You can either explain how you enjoy the material but simply can’t help falling asleep, or you can offer fervent promises that it won’t happen again. Be honest, and try to choose the explanation that you think will be consistent with your behavior in the weeks to come

And there you have it. It sounds pretty straightforward — even naive. Perhaps many of you think it won’t work — but it does, as long as you are realistic about what it’s going to get you.

So what do you all think? Anyone have a great story to share about falling asleep in class (I’ve can think of a couple good ones myself..)? As always, feel free to post a comment or email me at (uh oh here comes to spam): info@studenthelpforum.com

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The internet is truly a wonderland. Thousands of news stories, blogs, games, videos, social networking sites, all lie tantalizingly beneath your fingertips, just waiting to be explored.

Don’t surf the internet on study time.

Some buildings on my campus don’t have wireless. I remember being stuck inside the Political Science department once in a rainstorm. My class was still hours away, but I decided to hole up in an unused classroom with my laptop rather than brave the heavy rain.

At first, I didn’t have anything to do. My routine is to check my gmail, then read some news, then check my gmail again, then my RSS Reader, then more gmail. After that, I do some work, and check gmail again. (Does this sound familiar?)

With no internet, I couldn’t check my gmail, and the whole process was stopped before it started. Then, a miracle happened. Wanting desperately to avoid boredom, I started working on the first thing I could find — and finished, rather quickly. Then I found something else, finished it, and moved onto a third task. By the time class started, I had finished three rather unpleasant tasks that I had been putting off for weeks.

Since that incident, I’ve taken myself off the internet on a number of occasions, and it has resulted in productivity gains every single time. One of the secrets to being productive is to schedule uninterruptible periods. Even if you are working diligently most of the time, the thirty second break to check email or facebook can set you back as many as five or six minutes when you consider the time spent getting re-focused.

“Very well,” you may be saying to yourself, “but what if I need the internet for my work? Is there any way I can have the best of both worlds?”

It turns out that there is. Invisibility Cloak is a Greasemonkey script written by Lifehacker’s Gina Trapani. It allows you to create a blacklist of sites and specify a time period during which they will be blocked. For instance, you can block *.facebook.com and youtube.com between 12:00 AM and 8:00 PM, which means that your browser will prevent you from accessing that page except for four hours at night.

You can configure the script in Firefox by going to Tools => Greasemonkey => Manage User Scripts, and selecting Invisibility Cloak from the menu on the left.In order to change the period, you will need to edit the Javascript file with an editor (Notepad works just fine). Just click the Edit button in the lower left hand corner on the pop-up window and it will open the associated Javascript file. Find the following four lines:

// EDIT THE NEXT LINE TO SET THE HOUR AFTER WHICH SITES SHOULD APPEAR
// HOURS IN MILITARY TIME, SO 15 = 3PM
var surf_time_after = 15;
// END EDIT

Edit the value of surf_time_after as per the instructions, save, and go back to Firefox. If you want, you can also change the message that appears when you try to access a blocked site. I changed it to something rather derogatory. Here’s the line you need to alter. Just change the text inside the parenthesis (keep the quotation marks).

alert(”You can surf after “+ readable_time + “; right now, get back to work!”);

Do give this script a spin - it works remarkably well, even though there is a very simple way to disable it (if enough people want to know how to do this, I will post an answer in the comments). Also, if you have anything to add on the subject of going offline to increase productivity, please feel free to comment for the benefit of other readers. I’m also an avid comment reader, so I look forward to it as well.

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GPA or Grade Point Average, is the one deciding factor that compares the quality of your work with your classmates and ranks you accordingly. The higher your GPA the better. But sometimes it is much harder to increase this simple number than it first seems. Thankfully, there are some simple steps you can take to boost your GPA. Pick the Brain has provided a few tips on this very topic, but I have found a few more that prove very useful.

John Wesley’s original 7 tips include:

1. Go to class - You would be surprised how often this is not followed. When you get to university you will learn that nothing is compulsory, and none of your lecturer’s will care if you go to their courses or not, so it is extremely difficult to stay focused and motizated.
2. Sit in the Front Row - Not my favourite place to sit in a class, but it will get you involved, and make it easier to learn more.
3. Take Notes by Hand - I am a massive supporter of this idea. I don’t think that you learn as easily just by following through printed notes. Actually writing the information down engages a different part of your brain, meaning that you are thinking about the concept and memorizing it at the same time.
4. Do a weekly review - I have never tried this, but I suspect that it would work well. Most of the time you do this automatically however, whenever you are studying for an exam or preparing an assignment.
5. Go to office hours - Again, I have never tried this, because I do not think that intruding on a lecturer in their time is of any benefit. If you have any questions, just ask them during your classes or directly afterwards.
6. Find smart people to work with - Working through questions, and analysing key concepts can be a great way to fully understand the topic you are studying. It is for this reason that I encourage everyone to get a mentor. Someone older who can help you out, but have a smart fellow student in your same course can often be just as good.
7. Avoid all-nighters - All-nighters are not the most pleasant experience, but most of you will do at least one of two in the next few years. Sometimes they are unavoidable, but I would try to eliminate them as much as possible.

My three additional thoughts on how to increase your GPA are of a different thought process, but are still highly valuable.

1. Take easier courses - Make sure they are related to your major, but taking a few easy courses is a great way to boost your GPA. You just have to make certain that you will score extremely highly in all the assignments and exams. Remember, most courses are weighed the same, so a quick, simple course can be a great way to increase your GPA.
2. Focus on the important assessment - It can be very irritating, but it is often the case that some of the least important assignments in terms of marks can be the hardest and take the most amount of time. Try to focus on the assignments and exams that will have the biggest impact on your overall grade.
3. Remove distractions - Acquiring a high GPA can mean a lot of study. This is a very hard thing to do for many people, so you must help yourself out as much as possible. A good way to do this is to remove all distractions from your study area - TVs, computer games, mobile phones…

Having a high GPA can mean a lot when you are trying to get your first major job, or if you are trying for scholarships and academic awards. Often it is not easy to increase this number by a lot, but it is worth a try!

It’s very difficult to keep yourself focused when studying for an online degree through an online education course. You can consult from encyclopedias and dictionaries i.e. german english dictionary or the online french english dictionary to take help in your studies. Always choose the best online courses offered by a reputable institution like the University of Maryland.

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Getting more work done in a shorter time frame is one of the most important things that any student should always be striving for. The most obvious way to do this is to try and remove all distractions from the room around you. TV’s, computer games, music, and friends can all be taken out of the picture for the short time that you need to work.

It is for this reason that people seem to get so much work done in a specialized workspace, like a library or cubicle. Sit down, and focus on completing a certain amount of tasks in a distraction free environment, and you will certainly get more work done.

If you work or study in the same place that you relax, than this can be a problem. Distractions will always creep into your work, and it will be harder to focus.

Hope is not lost however. There are ways to create a more ‘Work Friendly’ environment.

• Remove all distractions, eg. computers, TVs, music

• Establish uninterruptible periods [LifeHack/Steve Pavlina]

• Get everything you need within easy reach, eg. textbooks, calculators, blank paper

My personal favourite is to go to your local library. It is a quiet place, with huge amounts of information just around the corner.

The real reason this works is because of the change in your mindset. One place is to relax, the other is for work, and the two should never meet. The problem for most students is that these two places are the one room. Try this out for a few days, and you will certainly see an improvement.

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