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The 12 Perks and Struggles of Being Perpetually Early

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at VCU chapter.

Most people work on their own time schedule– some people arrive to everything right as it starts, some are notorious for getting to everything 10 minutes late and some just don’t show up at all. A very small percentage of the population, however, arrive early to just about everything. Here’s 12 perks and struggles those who are perpetually early to everything face:

1) Perk: You’ve become an old pro of finding ways to pass the time.

You’ve mastered enjoying hanging out with yourself and every imaginable way available to pass the time, be it counting sheep or playing I-Spy with yourself or finding the nearest fast food place for a quick bite. Hey, gotta do whatcha gotta do!

2) Struggle: You’re constantly waiting on other people.

With the amount of time I’ve spent waiting on other people, I could probably have driven cross-country at least twice. It seems like no matter how on-time you are, you’re always stuck waiting for someone, which could drive anyone crazy. Hanging out with yourself is all well and good, except when you’ve been hanging out with yourself for two hours.

3) Perk: You always have your first choice of seats, tables or parking spots.

You never have to sit in the front of the movie theater and always get rock-star parking wherever you go. You find yourself chuckling at the poor souls who thought that they could show up at the start time of the movie and get a good seat.

4) Struggle: You’re the designated seat saver.

You should basically just get “sorry, this seat is taken” tattooed on your forehead, tbh. You always bring an extra jacket or bag because you’ll have to drape something over the seat next to or across from you to save it for whichever friend is late. This in itself is only a little annoying, except for consistently looking like you’ve been stood up.

5) Perk: You get to something when you say you’ll get there, no exceptions.

Everyone who knows you knows that when you say you’ll get to something at 7:00, you will get there by 7:00. You stick to your word and think it’s impolite to keep someone waiting on you *cough cough*.

6) Struggle: It seems like everyone else gets there when they want to, not when they say they will.

Your friend could swear up, down and sideways they’ll get to something at 9 p.m., but you know it’ll actually be around 10:30 before they’re even ready. This is okay sometimes, but other times you wish you could change their clock for an hour and a half ahead of time so they might actually show up on time.

7) Perk: Your internal clock runs at least five minutes ahead of everyone else’s.

You think that getting to something at the start time is rude and would much rather be early. You rationalize this by saying you leave early to prepare for anything that may happen– be it traffic, weather, accident or the zombie apocalypse.

8) Struggle: You hate being late or even on-time.

To you, being late is getting there any time that isn’t at least 10 minutes before the function starts. You get anxiety whenever you show up somewhere as it starts and are much more comfortable getting there super early– too bad you’re the only one in your friend group who thinks so.

9) Perk: You’re entirely comfortable with waiting for hours on end in your car.

You’re an old pro at driving around to waste the time and have memorized the different radio stations available in your car. You might have even taken a nap or two in there, all while waiting on someone. 

10) Struggle: Your phone battery is probably shot.

Before you start counting the number of people wearing blue or the number of broken headlights you see while waiting, you give social media a thorough run through… or two or three, plus level up a few times in Candy Crush and stalk Kylie Jenner’s best friends a couple times. Because of this, your phone can go from 100 percent to 40 percent just while you’re waiting for someone.

11) Perk: You’re never late to anything.

I mean, duh. You have a reputation for being on time and not keeping anyone waiting, and you’d prefer to keep it that way. 

12) Struggle: People take advantage of your earliness.

Just because you don’t like to waste people’s time doesn’t mean other people feel the same about you. People don’t even try to get to something on time because they know you’ll beat them there no matter what.

Cover Photo 

Image Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

 

Emily is a part-time coffee addict and a full-time English and Public Relations student at Virginia Commonwealth University. She enjoys all things punny, intersectional feminism, Chrissy Teigen's tweets and considers herself a bagel & schmear connoisseur. You can probably find her either listening to the Hamilton soundtrack or binge watching The Office for the thousandth time
Keziah is a writer for Her Campus. She is majoring in Fashion Design with a minor in Fashion Merchandising. HCXO!