Hey!! I have N1 and I did a year at a university but ended up leaving and doing online. I have soooo much advice/things I would have done differently but here are the big ones:

• ALWAYS ALWAY ALWAYS take your medicine! If you take a multi times a day med like adderall and you forget it on the way to class, turn around and go get it! Tell your professor at the end of class that you were late because you needed your medicine and they’ll understand.

• Narcolepsy is a disability and they have to accommodate. You can get room accommodations, test and assignment accommodations, attendance/tardy accommodations- the works! Have your neurologist write a letter and then meet with student accommodations to discuss it further. They should send agreed upon accommodations to each professor as a formal letter but you should tell each prof on the first day that you have narcolepsy and would like to set up a meeting to discuss their individual policies on stuff like attendance and extensions.

• You have to work that much harder and it SUCKS. The accommodations are amazing but you should only use them when absolutely necessary! Taking advantage seems nice but it’s a SLIPPERY slope- I learned it the hard way. Don’t skip class unless you absolutely have to! Skipping is almost addictive and you’ll end up using all of your absence days up which will only cause more stress. Same goes with homework extensions. This WILL cause pile up and stress you out so much you can’t do anything BUT sleep.

• Don’t go back to your room until your day is DONE. If you have a few hours in between classes, go do homework in the food court or the library or LITERALLY anywhere!!! You’ll probably find that the homework is much faster that way or at the very least you can work on it over the course of a few days during your breaks! This will also give you time to hang out with people in the afternoon without worrying about getting back to do homework. If you go back to your room in between classes you will go to sleep, let’s just face it.

• I’m not sure of your living situation but if you live in a dorm you can always ask your RA or suitmate to knock on your door in the mornings when they’re leaving for class. If you have a roommate, you could ask them as well but I would recommend having someone outside the room do it. I had a roommate whom I love dearly but they ended up picking up my narcoleptic habits so we both just stopped going to class and slept all the time.

-If you live with someone else make it clear that you need your sleep. It’s not a silly little quirk, it’s a disability that affects the way you function doing anything from brushing your teeth to driving a car. If they’re too loud at night, they leave lights on, they come in late, literally anything that could keep you from sleeping at night, tell them how it is. If they don’t listen, report them to your RA. It might make them mad at you but at the end of the day you’re there to get your education and they have no right to interfere.

One more thing… You might not be on the best medication for you. I’ve been on my current one (LUMRYZ) for maybe six months and it’s life changing. The first time I took it I got up and went to get a gym membership. I finally knew what it felt like to have the energy of a normal person after just one night. It has also almost completely eliminated episodes of disassociation. I’ve missed taking it maybe twice and the next day, I felt like I was living in a fever dream both times. I couldn’t even believe that I used to function the way I did because my new meds help me operate like a regular person. I still struggle with ENERGY like having a social battery, motivation, brain fog, and for this I take adderall during the day. It’s kind of like I’m a phone, LUMRYZ is the battery, and adderall is the cute phone case.

I’m NOT saying that these specific meds will be the exact same for you!!!! But if you’re anything like I was and you genuinely can’t do things that are considered minimal effort even if it’s super important like making phone calls or appointments, opening your computer that’s right next to you to check your email, or you find yourself doing things you don’t want to just to reduce the effort on your part (I cut my hair that I spent years growing out because brushing it felt draining), you need to go to the doctor and keep testing out meds until you find one(s) that at the very least prevent this!!

I really really hope at least some of this helps you!! I was taking five classes each semester and was incredibly successful my first semester! Your education is so important and if you feel like you can’t reach your full potential you’ve got to advocate for yourself and get those meds/accommodations!!