How best can I stay alert until 1:59 am and fall asleep at 2:00 am?

October 18, 2024 5:35 PM

I am taking an online class that goes until 2:00 am my time once a week. I frequently start getting groggy around 1:00 am and feel as if I'm not at my best for the last hour of class. What are the best strategies for staying awake and alert right up until 2:00 am without harming too much my ability to immediately go to sleep after the class ends?

The class is recorded but because the class is the best time to ask the teacher questions, I want to be present and alert until the end of the class. All the stuff I find online is about sleep hygiene to get to sleep quickly - no screens the last hour before sleep , no caffeine 10 hours before sleep - these strategies are no good for me in this situation.

- Caffeine timing is the most obvious area I can work on - when can I drink my last coffee/tea/coke to maximize alertness at 1 am but let me go to sleep at 2?
- I would rather stay away from sleep aids (and melatonin does nothing for me) but I'm not dead set against them
- Nothing loud/bright that would disrupt other occupants of the apartment (though I'm in a different room, sound/light isolation is bad)
- I have a sleep mask to block out light and can play sleep meditations to help me get to sleep quickly
- typical sleep schedule is 11:00 pm to 7:00 am, I usually have my last caffeinated drinks around 4:00 pm

posted by matcha action to Health & Fitness (18 answers total)

Caffeine timing is very individual - you’ll have to experiment. I know a handful of people who can’t have any caffeine after 9am-ish if they want to sleep, and plenty more who can drink coffee then immediately go to bed.

Cold often helps people stay awake - if feasible, keeping your room chilly, with maybe a fan blowing at you, might help a little with alertness.
posted by maleficent at 5:44 PM on October 18

Is it the kind of class where one might take notes? You’re less likely to lose as much focus if you’re actively doing something, I think.
posted by Glinn at 6:06 PM on October 18

Can you move around? Watch standing up, walk in place, raise your arms. Drink cold water. I’d also be ready for sleep at 2 by brushing teeth, etc before class.
posted by Sukey Says at 6:15 PM on October 18

If this were me, I would:
- have my last caffeine at 1pm
- sit in a hard chair, ideally a wooden chair at a dining table, for class
- do jumping jacks or stretches at 1am
- after class: brush teeth, change into pajamas and go straight to bed
posted by Emmy Rae at 6:22 PM on October 18

Drink lots of water just before and during class and don't allow yourself to pee until class is over. You'll be alert... but you also may be very distracted.
posted by cgg at 6:22 PM on October 18

YMMV but on long drives I've found it's impossible for me to feel drowsy while chewing on ice. Probably related somehow to the cold thing mentioned upthread, but it's having the ice in my mouth that really seems to be the magic charm.

The effect dissipates within minutes of finishing the last ice cube.
posted by Bardolph at 6:33 PM on October 18

Yeah, when I had a class like this for a while, I just drank a caffeine water during class, then went to bed after. That worked for me, but of course, YMMV!
posted by limeonaire at 7:15 PM on October 18

I have a few questions: Is there any possibility of watching the recording, then messaging any questions to the teacher? Not sure if they would be open to that. Also I LOOOOVE caffeinated as coffee but recently I decided to switch to decaf as well as herbal tea--maybe you could slowly incorporate more decaf each day til you're drinking only decaf. If not, could you finish drinking it around 9-10?
posted by bookworm4125 at 8:56 PM on October 18

Nicotine is my go to short acting stimulant drug for these types of things.
posted by jpziller at 10:31 PM on October 18

I used to teach 2hr classes but no mortal can stay alert for that long, so I always scheduled a break in the middle. If you can't persuade your course to do the same then I'd echo the advice to do 5 mins of jump-around at 01:00hrs.
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:07 AM on October 19

How could you possibly be at your best with that schedule? I'd consider working with the recording and then either asking questions about the last class at the start of a new one, or emailing them shortly before the new class starts.

If you really want to stay awake for the live class, what if you try everything mentioned above to stay awake, but then turn off your mic/camera and the screen for the last 15 minutes? Just lying in a dark room listening to a teacher seems like a good way to fall asleep, and you'd still only miss a few minutes.
posted by toucan at 4:16 AM on October 19

For times I need to be alert late at night, I try to be a little cold to keep myself awake. Then diving into warm sheets is a fast transition to sleep.
posted by nickggully at 7:00 AM on October 19

typical sleep schedule is 11:00 pm to 7:00 am

That's a really healthy sleep schedule, and sleep is so important to your health - I would just watch the recordings. Seriously, no one class is that important (I say this is a former college professor). Does the professor not have office hours (whether virtual or in-person) that you could attend with whatever questions come up that week?
posted by coffeecat at 7:44 AM on October 19

Take a nap earlier in the day. Turn the brightness up on your screen, turn off blue light filters on your phone and computer (sometimes this can be automatically scheduled so that it can switch back right at 2am). Don't change into pajamas until you have to go to sleep and try to watch the class in a separate location that’s not your bedroom.
posted by hooray at 8:08 AM on October 19

Something I haven't seen mentioned is to wash your face in COLD water on your way to bed. For some reason that triggers sleepiness in my experience, although you'd imagine it doing the opposite. Anyway, give it a try, along with the other good ideas above.
posted by anadem at 8:22 AM on October 19

This is perhaps an orthogonal answer to your question and perhaps you’ve already done this, but have you asked the teacher if they know that you, their keen question-asking student, are actually participating in the class live in the middle of the night your time?

I say this because I have taught live online classes at quite early and quite late times, but never have had a student in another time zone taking a class as late as you are taking it, and in the whole of my career as a teacher, I don’t think I have ever received any pedagogical training in live-teaching students who are online and technically “synchronous” but in the middle of their local night while it’s my local day.

Because of this, I really think it’s worth checking in with your teacher via email on your progress in class so far and whether you and your schedule can better fit into their planning, teaching and feedback workflow for each lesson, especially if the class is part of a larger institution and the teacher must follow its guidelines.

This is because:

- your teacher may simply not be aware of your location and time zone if the institution through which you are studying has merely given them your name, student ID and email address;

- your teacher may not be processing that their “live” students include people like you if there are more than a few dozen students at a time and the overwhelming majority of them are near the teacher’s physical location;

- your teacher may not be considering the very legitimate academic needs of the cohort of students like you in their lesson planning, assignment design and feedback structures since you all may be, to them, “just” people far away who “only watch the recording” (and can never show up at their office door); and

- whatever honor-code/academic-integrity/anti-plagiarism systems exist for students in their class/at the institution may be written with the in-person, local student in mind, and thus place unfair or impossible demands on remote students like you if there is a suspicion that you’ve violated these policies.

Good luck! I know that many teachers are out there who would absolutely be open to at least a brief exchange of email with dedicated but remote students like you trying to optimize their experience. Your fellow students may also be a resource — if you have any contact with them on the class message board or online classroom, you may find them willing to pass your questions along, too, especially if the class is convivial.
posted by mdonley at 10:21 AM on October 19

Never tested it, but I once say someone say on Reddit that in order not to fall asleep in class he'd just try and keep one foot off the ground all the time. It got a lot of "this works!"-comments.
posted by Captain Fetid at 5:37 AM on October 20

I concur with the suggestions to watch the recording and ask questions at the start of the next session. Or via email. You’re paying for the class, you can ask questions on your schedule.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 7:54 PM on October 20