If I said that to my high school self, she would genuinely laugh in my face. I’ve always been a stay-up-late, sleep-in-as-long-as-possible kind of person. In high school, this created a problem. I would completely sleep through my 6:30 a.m. alarm and have to rush every single day just to barely make it on time. Whenever I had the chance, I would wake up past noon and go to sleep well past midnight. Sometimes I tried to convince myself my day would be more productive if I woke up earlier, but those plans never worked.
I came to college with this same understanding: I was just not a morning person. My first semester freshman year, I had a 9:30 a.m. class and a 10:10 a.m. class. I genuinely struggled to wake up for them. I never ate breakfast or did anything beforehand—I would just wake up, throw on clothes and make my way to class. This worked well enough for me. I am not going to lie: my classes freshman year were not difficult at all. It was a combination of me accidentally picking the easiest possible English classes offered and taking different pathways my advisor suggested.
Last semester, I had a very rude awakening. I took six in-person courses—five English courses and one for my minor—and it was a lot. I was constantly doing assignments, with what felt like an eternity of reading and writing assigned daily. Not only could I not get ahead on work, but I was barely staying on top of it.
My classes started at 11 a.m. every day and ended around 5 p.m. I would try to force myself to do work after they ended, but I was mentally drained at that point. Every assignment took much longer than it should have, and I could never find a rhythm. My routine was not working.
One morning—after I didn’t finish an assignment the night before—I decided to go to campus with my roommate at 7:30 a.m. for her 8 a.m. class. I began going with her more consistently, doing assignments in those three hours before my classes began. This was the first time I felt genuinely productive and on top of my work all semester.
Since then, I’ve been getting to campus before all of my classes and finishing as much work as I possibly can. I’m sure you’ve all heard this before, but I’ll say it again: It takes time to find what works for you, and it may not be what you expect. I would have never thought I’d be a morning person—especially after 18 years of insisting I wasn’t. Now, sleeping in on a day I have class looks like waking up at 8 a.m. I’m sure during the summer I’ll go back to late nights, but for now I’ve found what works for me.