This past Monday I experienced my first collegiate case of oversleeping. Not that it hadn't happened before, but sleeping habits change in college. They are bizarre at best and destructive at worst.
In any case, the victim of this incident was German 1. There was no hope of getting to class. By the time I woke up, the goal was to get to my eleven. My roommate Tim, noticing that I had yet to emerge from my room, woke me up.
In my stupor, I heard from myself ask, "Why what time is it?"
"Eleven."
As this development sank in, I took in the situation. The windowshade had way too much light behind it, and though I still couldn't read the numbers on the clock, four digits were certainly a bad sign.
I groaned and rolled out of bed.
Now, there are several causes of situations like this, and several remedies that I have developed for combating the pain of waking up. The cause of that particular incident remains a mystery. The alarm clock didn't show any sign of being set, though I'm not sure what would possess me to depend on my internal clock.
Often, the problem with not waking up at all is the alarm clock. The problem can normally be traced to one of two causes. Either the volume is off, or the AM/PM setting is wrong. The latter defies the understanding of many, and when the AM/PM on the regular clock doesn't get you, the alarm one will. Ironically, if the clock has been set with complete incompetence, and both are wrong, the alarm will go off at the correct time.
Another irony (one that Alannis didn't mention) is that the alarm clock, a machine built to wake a person up, is designed with a function that allows you to oversleep. This of course is the snooze button. The times on these little corruptive monsters range from five to fifteen minutes, and they can be pressed repeatedly, further hampering the alarm clock's principle mission.
But enough blaming the alarm clock. Even an alarm clock that slaps you in the face won't help if you happened to have been partaking of a late night hall party four hours ago. This problem I trace to my various selves. You see, there is a Night Matt and there is a Morning Matt. Night Matt will say, "I'm having a great time at three o'clock. I'm not going to bed. Screw Morning Matt!" Then when Morning Matt hears the alarm clock five hours later, he says, "I hate Night Matt! That guy always screws me over!"
This pattern always seems to recur, and while I haven't discovered how to get these two distinct parts of me to agree, I have discovered several means of insuring that Morning Matt wakes up and that the process is a little easier for him.
The alarm should be placed out of reach, and it should be very loud. Mine is a short soldier that blasts out "Revelry" every morning. Today my hallmate asked me, "Was that your alarm I heard this morning?" Any alarm that can be heard through walls should do the job adequately. Since it is across the room, it guarantees you will get up, but depending on your sleeping attire, this can be painful, especially if you wear boxers to bed as I do. The solution is the union suit. It keeps you warm, so even though you're up, it feels like you're still in bed. Besides anything that has a "crap flap" built in is cool.
In the end, I site the great Band-Aid analogy. As fellow ski patroller Matt David said, "getting out of bed is like taking a Band-Aid off -- the quicker the better."
