Staying Awake: Simple Tips On How YOU CAN do it

Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.

Zig Ziglar

Time to pay tribute to our fellow Fifth Formers who are currently studying hard for their SPM exams. As this post is being written, we can see so many of you studying late into the night out in public places. Keep it up!

However, one of the biggest problem encountered in the course of revision and studying, not just by Fifth Formers alone of course, is staying awake!

Sleep is a biological need that knows not the importance of exams to students. It just creeps in uninvited, much to the annoyance of us all. Here we are, trying to make full use of our 24 hours and our eyelids start to take weight of baby African elephants.

Fear not people! It’s time once again to turn to the trusted, age-old adage, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Here are some of the things you can do to help yourself keep yourself awake and focused for a wholesome study session.

1. Apples

Eating apples help you stay awake thanks to the natural sugar content in it. Unlike coffee, muching on apples or any other fruits for that matter,  is a much healthier option. Plus, there are those who feel that the natural sugar stays longer in your system compared to caffeine.

2. Don’t study in your bedroom!

This tip is always overlooked. You won’t do well hoping to get in a whole night’s worth of studying if you’re doing it in your bedroom! Haha. Quite a simple theory to understand but we’re sure you’d agree with us that many still fail to recognize the importance of choosing the right place to study.

Do yourself a favour and stop believing that you can have an effective revision session on your beds. We dare bet you, 9 out of 10 times, you’ll just end up waking up the next morning regretting how much time was wasted all because you tried to fool yourself.

If possible, set up a place suitable for studying. You should be sitting up and the room should be brightly lit. Your body system reacts differently if you place yourself in certain environments. When you’re set up for studying, your brain “knows” that it’s time to study and this will help you keep those eyes open and soldier on.

4. Physical Activity

When tiredness sets in and you start to feel sleepy, get up for a bit and do stretches. If possible, trying running around. This is to get your blood flow going again to increase the likeliness of you staying up and alert. It’ll help you forget that you’re sleepy, too.

5. Study with friends

Get a group of friends to go out for night study sessions. It really helps. Go to a mamak, Mackers or any other place with your buddies to have a beneficial group study. You can help each other stay awake and discussions between your friends will more than likely help you keep your eyes open and your brain alert. Be sure to tell your parents where you’re going and always place top priority for your friends’ and your safety.

6. The Right Mindset

This is could be up for debate but we feel that this is the most effective tip to staying awake in the midst of revision.

Sleepiness sets in because your brain tells your body that it is tired and needs to rest. Under normal circumstances, you would do well to listen to your brain’s pleas. But c’mon, it’s crunch time, there’s no time for sleep!

What you should do is to try to consciously convince your brain that you’re not sleepy. Just keep repeating to yourself how awake you feel and try hard to keep your tiredness off your mind. Just ignore it. If you don’t think about it, you’ll stand a better chance of having your brain “forget” about your sleepiness. You’ll be surprised how well this works.

So there you go, very simple, tried and tested ways to help you burn the midnight oil. Just keep telling yourself that YOU CAN do it. Try hard enough and you’ll see how right you are.

Be sure not to neglect your sleep though whenever possible. Your body needs it and staying up late for days on end is not healthy at all.

P.S Just in case you’re all wondering, eating Kopiko like nobody’s business, even a whole bag of em’, won’t do the trick. All that’ll do is give you a tooth ache. Trust us. Been there, done that.