Being a night owl means that you feel more awake in the evening hours. While this can come in handy, it isn’t always a blessing. Let's just say being college-aged and taking classes, it does't mix well on an academic level.
1. Hard to wake up
They say that the early bird gets the worm. It seems to be true, because as a night owl there is not enough awakeness to jump on the opportunity. Some mornings opening my eyes is enough of a struggle, how can I expect myself to be able to find a dumb worm too?
2. Tired all day
Alarms are a tool that are attempted to use, but don’t always prove to be helpful in achieving the task. The idea of a snooze button is nice — Who doesn’t want a few more z's? — but it acts like more of an enemy in all reality. It gives more of a chance to not wake up. Working its magic, it is often found worsening the problem.
Somedays the cup-of-joe doesn’t work so well. Maybe it does, but the fatigued brain just overwhelms the resulting effects. Either way, no one can function at top level in a state such as this. Some may see this symptom is caused by lack of sleep, but often that factor doesn’t prove to matter.
3. Avoid certain activities after a certain time
I don’t know about all night owls, but I find that there are certain activities that I take part in that make it even harder to turn off my brain for bed. These include drinking coffee and working out.
With a tight schedule, it is hard to manage the little time that is devoted in a schedule to each task. For me it works best to work out in the morning or in the evening. Most would think that the night owl would rather work out in the evening, but in my case this magnifies my night owl problems.
With all of the endorphins and such that are released when a good sweat is had, my brain is often left more wired than ever. Sure the gym seems like a good way to help a person wind down, but if the result of the activity is not pure exhaustion, it fails the intended result.
4. Feels most alive in evening hours
This point follows the suit of the previous one. Tired all day and are about to welcome the night fall? Haha, joke's on you. Before you know it you are more awake than you have been all day. Now you feel like facing the day, but you need to get some sleep so tomorrow won’t feel worse.
Feel like you can study late into the night? No matter how awake you are, don’t do it. All that can be said is that the 2:30 a.m. closing of the library doesn’t mix with 8:10 a.m. classes. Maybe once or twice, but after a while it makes life horrible.
Being awake in the evening is handy for traveling, and movie marathons, but when it comes to school and brain functioning it is not always so nice.
5. Finally get settled? Oh crap, I forgot…
Your sheep are almost done being counted and you are seconds from entering a peaceful slumber. The next thing you know, you remember that one task that has to be done. Whether you left the oven on, or forgot the dog outside. Either way, when you get back, your venture basically erased what progress you had made in the way of sleeping.
These problems might seem to get in the way of brain function sometimes, but night owls can still have fun. After all, the most fun things seem to happen at sleepovers and other activities when one can stay up all night responsibly.
