For many of us college students, the world feels like it was built for morning people. The sun rises earlier around this time of year, signaling the start of a new day, classes typically start before 11 a.m. and many of our professors hold their office hours bright and early with smiles on their faces. For those of us who hate waking up early in the morning, this can be a pain. We continually drag ourselves out of the bed to classes after a short and restless night of sleep following an afternoon filled with studying. Often, we find ourselves getting stuck in the cycle of going to bed late in order to get work done. There doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to get everything done, and so we end up waking up just as exhausted as we were the night before.

But the new year is a time for change, and as we head into 2025, perhaps we can finally become the morning people we’ve always wanted to be. A morning person’s “brain is most alert in the morning, and [they’re] generally very good at harnessing this energy and focus to get tasks, work and chores done.” Many factors contribute to whether someone is a morning person or a night owl. Among these are light cues, temperature, age, gender, routine and genetic makeup. A study of Italian university students found that the students who identified as morning people were more likely to have higher grades on exams, which were typically taken in the morning, than those who identified as evening people or neither a morning or evening person.

While genetic makeup does have some say in how easy it is to get you to transition to a consistent earlier wake up time, it is not impossible for our mornings to become easier with time. Patience is a requirement to forming healthy habits. This means that going to bed early one night won’t be enough to entirely change your way of living. Many people are guilty of giving up their morning person journey after seeing no apparent benefits of it after only a couple nights of early sleep. This, however, can be helped with a routine. 

As a generation highly dependent on technology, we must make an intentional effort to pull away from the dopamine rush of our screens before bed. This can be tough after finishing up an assignment and simply wanting to crawl into bed and watch TikToks, but the excitement of your screen paired with the high artificial light is sure to be interfering with your quality of sleep. Instead, you can try to wind down with an alternative form of media, such as music, an audiobook or a physical book. Even an e-reader, such as a Kindle, has less interference than a phone or laptop screen due to its smart E-ink display. It can also be beneficial to have something to look forward to upon immediately waking up, which can provide an incentive to waking up earlier. Some examples of this could be a morning cup of coffee or tea, a crossword puzzle or a creative activity such as writing or painting. 

Because light is important to retaining the cycle of our circadian rhythm, getting outside into the sunlight can be very helpful in waking you up in the morning. You’d be surprised by how much being outside or in light can immediately boost your mood. During this time of year, it can be especially gloomy and cold—a reason why many of us may be struggling more than usual to get our day started—but getting outside in the light will make it that much easier for us to go to sleep that night.

At the end of the day, we can’t change the entire education system to suit our own personal needs and desires, especially because our society is made up of all kinds of people with different circadian rhythms and routine preferences. All the individuals in a community will never be totally satisfied with their academic schedule, and it is almost guaranteed that you will end up having to take an 8 a.m. class at some point in your college career. The best thing that we can do is try our best to set ourselves up for success with extra effort in this environment. Right now, many of us may feel like we are operating on borrowed time, slotting in time to do nice things for ourselves in between the many academic and extracurricular activities that we’ve already committed ourselves to do. However, by making sure to use our time wisely, we can help our body become more used to the idea of getting up well-rested to start and end our days well.