Rude Awakening

I BECAME very concerned two days ago when a friend called me up needing help. Did I have any foolproof methods for waking up in the morning, he asked. When I suggested that he use an alarm, he called me hard-hearted and insensitive. It seemed he was in serious trouble: he had slept through two finals at midyear, losing all credibility with UHS. "I don't necessarily want to take my midterms--I just have to be awake to attend them," he told me.

After some quick research, I discovered that my friend wasn't the only somnolent at Harvard; there were many others like him, and they had developed some pretty strange methods for waking up.

I found that hard-sleepers fall into two categories: those who hear the alarm, but shut it to off, and those (in greater jeopardy) who never hear it at all--dead-weights. I can only offer assistance to the former group.

The primary objective in waking alarm-killers is to get them out of bed before they can get to the alarm. Obviously, the first step is to put the alarm out of reach, which over sleepers do in a variety of ways. By far, the most common tactic for setting the alarm out of reach is the across-the-room technique. On a cold winter morning, running across the room to turn off a blaring alarm is stimulating, to say the least. Of course, the morning air can shock your body so that you immediately jump back in bed after shutting the offending alarm. Slight adjustments can be made to ease the pain, such as varying the alarm's volume or its distance from the bed. Others let the alarm sound for almost 30 seconds in order to prepare themselves mentally for entering the real world.

Those who find this method simply too shocking often try the alternative two-alarm system. This can be modified to meet almost anyone's needs: you need only set one alarm by your bed and the other across the room. The first alarm will wake you without making you get out of bed. Before the second one rings later (at a reasonable time you determine), you will have mentally prepared for it. Even if you fall back to sleep, the second alarm will be less of a rude surprise.

The combined two-alarm and across-the-room method is a solution for many, but some find that if they remain in the same room as their bed, they will inevitably go back to lie down; these people must go one step further, using the two-or-more-alarms method and the out-of-the-room technique. This double-jeopardy system entails setting an alarm inside the room to wake you, and one outside to get you up and away from the bed. Rarely does one use the out-of-the-room method on its own because of the hazards of shock.

The deluxe edition of the two-or-more-alarms, out-of-the-room method is a succession of three or four bells or buzzers which go off at regular intervals of ten minutes or so. The alarms start softly, perhaps with music. As you turn each one off, you are allowed to go back to bed until the last one rings. The succession of alarms will have taken you out of the room slowly. Usually the last alarm is the most obnoxious, just in case you're tempted to sleep through it. The best story I heard was from one sophomore who lived next to the bathroom in his suite. He could hear almost any noise in the bathroom, so he decided to set up two alarms, one in his room to wake him up and one in the shower which would echo in the bathroom. When he got to the alarm to turn it off, he was right there in the shower.

There is one form of reveille I've avoided mentioning: that dangerous, self-indulgent invention, the "snooze alarm." The "snooze" deliberately fools you into thinking you are waking up when you're not. While the idea of "just ten more minutes" doesn't seem all that dangerous on the surface, it's really a trap. Ten more minutes can become ten more minutes and ten more minutes and so on, until lunchtime. The "snooze" is successful when you have nothing to do that day, but want to feel like you've gotten up early. On days like these, you set the alarm for 8:30 a.m. and "sno-o-o-ze" until 10:30 or so. With the labels "snooze" or "dream" or even "varilarm", like mine, there is no pressure or guilt. You simply tell your-self, "I am awake, I'm just dreaming."

Finally, I found some methods which I do not recommend. One senior told me that his problem with waking up in the morning was not physical adjustment to the cold, but mental preparation. He wished he could have just one more hour or so. "Snoozing" didn't fool him, so he decided to set his alarm for 3 a.m. a few mornings. When he woke up at three, he could look at the clock and say, "Ah, I have four more hours to sleep." Another fellow had an even stranger method. Because of a late job, he doesn't get to sleep until 4:30 any morning, but he also doesn't like to sleep all day. By his bedside he keeps a glass of water and some No-Doz. When his alarm wakes him up, he takes the No-Doz and goes back to sleep until the drug wakes him up. He says it works for him, but I've noticed how spaced out this person acts and I don't recommend it. Instead, go to bed at a decent hour so when that buzzer rings you won't get alarmed.