ok, so im pretty new to the whole Lucid Dream thing, and for the past few days i’v been working on dream recall. im doing well enough for someone who just started trying a few days ago, but i just wanted to know if there were any more experienced dreamers out there who had an opinion on weather its better for dream recall to wake up on ones own or to use an alarm clock to wake you up?
Moved from General Lucidness. 
Personally, I think the alarm may cut into your haze and confuse you making you forget what you were dreaming about. But that’s just my opinion, and you shouldn’t stop using an alarm if you need one to wake up. This topic on Dream Recall is pretty helpful and you should look it over. And remember, even fragments are recall!
I prefer not having an alarm to remember my dreams (mostly because that means I don’t have time to lie there, especially if I need to get up to write in the DJ), but it’s not too bad if I’m keeping a DJ at the time. As you continue to keep your DJ, you’ll find that recalling becomes easier for you, and thus it won’t matter a terrible lot if you wake up to an alarm. My roommate this past year could wake up without an alarm, but she didn’t really care about her dreams, so she didn’t bother to remember them. I’d say it doesn’t matter too much either way. It’s your intention to remember your dreams that matters. 
I need an alarm to wake me up in the morning and I don’t find it causes any problems with lucid dreaming, although it can sometimes rudely interrupt some nice dreams 
Sometimes it is helpful to have the alarm wake you up, then press the snooze button and go back to sleep for another five minutes. If you were woken from a dream state, you should often be able to fall straight back into it- and when you’re dreaming it will of course, feel a lot longer than five minutes.