Oh, how I preached how lucky I was to be a morning person. I was able to wake up in the morning energized and ready to start my day. Without even a coffee in my hand, I felt truly well-rested and was astonished that I was able to thrive in the mornings. However, I went to this thing called university. And one piece of advice, don’t take morning classes.
It’s not just about making it through the morning at 8:30. To make it to an 8:30 class, you must wake up around 7:00 A.M. and then shower, put on makeup, do your hair and hopefully have enough time to squeeze breakfast in. Not to mention this all becomes severely harder to do during winter time as it’s harder to wake up when it’s cold and even harder to motivate yourself to go to class. Trying to put on mascara at 7:30 A.M. while shaking because your room is so cold is truly a humbling experience.
It doesn’t matter how secure you feel in your sleeping habits, university morning classes are much different than waking up in the morning for high school. I used to be in school for 7 hours a day and felt drained only towards the end of the day, now I go to one 50-minute tutorial and feel the need to go right back to bed.
I’m not sure if it’s the stress that sneaks up on university students or just the late-night studying, but let me just say that I never had to drink coffee before I came here. I think I’ve spent more flex dollars on caffeine than I have on food. My little morning pick-me-ups are the only thing I look forward to post-class.
I mean, it’s not all bad. Waking up early somehow makes me feel productive… if I make it out of bed. By the end of the day, I feel that I’ve really accomplished something, and right after I have that thought, I go to bed at 7 P.M. to catch up on rest for the next day. To be effective in your learning, you need rest. When you have an early morning class, you should have an early bedtime. And by bedtime, I mean asleep… not scrolling on TikTok for 2 hours. Because of this time management, you’re forced to lose time with friends and relaxation time due to cutting your night short.
Ugh, the dreaded class times that you can’t switch and are left with no other choice than to wake up at the crack of dawn. It’s not even like I have a commute or something, I live 5 minutes away from all of my buildings. But something about disturbing your sleep for class… just isn’t enjoyable.