Falling Asleep in Class

Starting junior year in high school I have developed a not so great habit of, you guessed it, falling asleep in class. Several factors usually come into play, but I thought that come college I would be only taking interesting classes and be super attentive in all of them and be the wonderful super power student and blah blah.

I was sorely mistaken. Well, don't get me wrong, I am a pretty good student, I do all of my homework, assignments, go to class, study etc etc, it's just I have dozed off at least once in every single class this semester, but all for different reasons.

MHC 150: I've only slightly dozed off in my peopling of NY class once or twice, probably because it is in the afternoon and I've had some time to wake up before that. The class is small and discussions can get pretty interesting, so I don't have a hard time staying awake in this one.

CHIN 202: This class is only fifty minutes long, but I've managed to doze off in five minute intervals mostly from lack of sleep every now and then. I do really enjoy learning Chinese, as it is my major, not to mention I'm in the flagship program, but when you get little to no sleep the night before, staying awake can be hard when you're totally exhausted.

MATH 150: This semester I took calc since I figured I would want to do something either science-y or economics-y in the future, and it is a pre-req for a bunch of classes and majors and etc. Class is two hours long and at the end of my two longest days of the week, so occasionally I'll pass out anywhere from five minutes to an hour somewhere in the back of the lecture. I can't help it. Recently I've been waking up with drool on my chin, so I guess you could say I get pretty deep into my calc naps. Luckily I took ap calc (slept through ap calc) senior year of high school so I have some loose grasp of what we're learning. I'm able to go home and teach myself a majority of the material I missed, and I just ask friends for everything else. I would have gotten credit for this class if I had done well on my ap test, but unfortunately, I took it with a concussion and napped through that too. Oh well.

ENG 220: There is no hope for this class whatsoever. I absolutely loathe English literature. I always have, and I probably always will. I would honestly rather walk over a bed of flaming hot coal than read a poem and analyze it. And you think I'm joking. I'm not. In class we mostly discuss the readings that I have absolutely zero interest in, (wait let me clarify, on a scale of zero to ten, negative thirty-seven interest level) so I can't help but fall asleep. I try so hard to stay awake, and trust me I've tried everything: getting plenty of sleep and getting little sleep before class, eating and not eating before class,  drinking non caffeinated beverages like orange and carrot juice, drinking various caffeinated beverages such as but not limited to: mountain dew, pepsi, early gray tea, english breakfast tea, other black teas, Starbucks chai lattes,  green teas, and oolongs teas. (I don't like coffee.) I've showed up to class knowing the readings inside and out and I've showed up to class not touching the readings at all. Nothing helps. Unfortunately taking some sort of literature class is a general education requirement at Hunter, so I have to take it. If I hadn't taken the ap composition test with a sprained hand or the ap literature test with a concussion, I probably could have gotten some sort of credit for English class.

Moral of this post:
1. Get enough sleep and take care of yourself.
2. Try to take classes you will find somewhat interesting.
3. You will not love every class you take.
4. Time management can be difficult but it's super important.
5. Kick butt on your ap tests because you can get out of several ger classes you would have zero interest in. And tons of credits too.
6. Macaulay students aren't all perfect. I am well aware that I'm not the only one who passes out in class. Yes, people do sleep in class, but this is college, we get stressed, we pull all-nighters, we try to do our best, we get involved in as many things as we can, it happens to the best of us. We're all human and have things to work on, but despite everything, we're all hard working and determined in the end.