mourning person

my phone rings at 5:29 a.m.  it’s Lauren.

i ignore it, but send a text. 

“?”

“Al’s car won’t start.  i figured you’d be up.”

she was right — i was up.  i’m usually awake by 5:30, but the fact that someone EXPECTED me to be up at that time really drove the point home.  things have changed.

in college, the only thing that would get me up that early was the urgency of a test i wasn’t prepared for (or free Grand Slams at Denny's). 

now, the feeling is the same.  the first thing i do every morning is go over my mental checklist of things i HAVE to do before my first class.  having a "test" every day will weigh you down.  each day it gets incrementally harder to respond to my alarm(s) (this is what helped me appreciate the secret math behind holidays like Labor Day.  not only is it an extra day of the weekend, it is also a day off of the work week.  a simple one-day holiday results in a tangible two-day improvement for everyone.  it's beautiful!).  unfortunately, the next holiday is a ways off..  

i've always hated waking up, for as far back as i can remember.  there's a reason this is the first full-time/early-morning job i've had — i played my cards right.  the only thing worse than waking up is waking up cold, in a drafty room at the back of 224 N. Manning Street.  nah, actually that was never so bad...*wistful sigh*..brief foray into memories of mornings in the Moon...focus!

the summer before senior year i decided to become a "morning person".  i knew my college approach to sleeping was unsustainable, and i'm not really into resisting the inevitable.  my attempt was relatively unsuccessful in practice, but i did work though what it was that made someone a morning person.  i think, at the core, it's just an excitement to start a new day, and a desire to get the most out of it.  i identify with that.  that was a start.

the difference between realizing it's desirable to be a morning person and actually waking up before 6 every day is pretty simple: incentives.  i've recently started thinking of college as an exercise in opportunity cost (realizing what you give up when you choose to do one thing over another).  it's a great way to develop your decision-making in an environment with few variables.  basically, what do you do when you don't HAVE to do anything?  of course, as Tom would be quick to remind you, and has informed his 7th graders, you don't HAVE to do ANYTHING, except die. that's not the point, though.     

when your alarm is going off for your 8 o'clock biology lab, it's not a disaster if you silence it and roll over.  it's your decision, and, theoretically, most of the consequences are directed at you.  what happens if i were to do that now, however, might just be categorized as a disaster.  i literally can't imagine the consequences of not showing up to school without warning.  the effects of my action (or lack thereof) spill over onto other people.  the result? i get up when my alarm goes off.  thankfully i appreciate the added incentive, instead of resenting it.  it's crazy how much you can accomplish in a day that starts at 5:30 and ends after midnight..  

on a side note, this opportunity-cost experiment is one of the few reasons that college graduates are still significantly favored by employers.  in most cases your degree doesn't help you do the job you're hired for, but your GPA and extra-curricular accomplishments tell them how motivated you are.  college degrees separate smart, ambitious people from just smart people. any objections?


oh, and even though i was awake for Al's early morning car emergency, i had no time to help.  she got a ride to school and we tackled the problem (dead battery) in the afternoon.  


wanna hear a teacher knock-knock joke?..
"knock, knock"
"who's there?"
"to."
"to who?"
"to whom!"