Habits are a crucial piece of college life, and a habit almost every college student already has is staying up late doing homework. This habit is pretty hard to break. If you’re like me, you’ll be up to two or three AM a couple of nights every week.

If this sounds like you, drop your morning classes now! There is nothing worse than having to choose between homework, sleep, and attendance, and even if you think you’ll be able to handle doing all three, that sleep deprivation will catch up to you in the end.

Think about it like this: an 8AM class means you should actually be getting up at 6AM or 6:30AM. You have to get dressed, maybe shower (you should shower), eat breakfast, travel to class, etc, etc. It takes time, and committing to get up at 6AM two or three days a week is not something you will be able to hold yourself to. You’ll sleep in, or miss your alarm, or decide the night before that “that’s too early.” Save yourself the hassle- drop those classes and get a full night’s sleep. Better to do five classes well than six sleep-deprived.

The system I found worked best was to not have any classes before 11 AM, but to set my alarm for 9 AM every morning. My bedtime I chose each night by really listening internally to when I was actually getting tired. On nights where I had a lot of homework, I could push it back, but I would always get tired that much earlier the next night.

Waking up at 9 meant I actually had time to eat a proper breakfast before my first class, and on days where my first class was in the afternoon, gave me a four hour chunk of time to do any work I had left.

Late night studying is such a typical experience, and so normal in College, that the last thing you want to do is stress yourself out by knowing that in the morning you have an 8 AM class.

Drop them now, drop them hard! If you can reschedule a class to the afternoon or evening, do it!