There’s one thing I will never understand, and believe me I’ve thought about this a lot. How on earth did we ever cope with the rigorous timetable of secondary education? Think about it, every morning we woke ourselves up at the ungodly hour of 7:15, dragged ourselves out of bed and faced up to a full six hour day. We did this, five days a week, again and again. Nowadays, as tired and overworked Uni students, utterly disillusioned and frankly a little bit sad, there’s no greater torture than a 9a.m lecture. Every week, as the blaring cacophony of my alarm rudely cuts through my innocent slumber, I have the same thoughts, and I’m willing to bet you’ve all had them too.
Stage One: Denial
It simply can’t be happening. You’re still asleep and you’re having some kind of nightmare. Nope, you’re definitely awake. Okay. Honestly, everything is fine, you only went to bed five minutes ago so it must be like, four a.m. at the latest. You’ve still got hours of sleep left. So you check your phone, but no it actually is half seven. Okay, maybe your phone is broken, just check your clock. No it’s definitely half seven. Actually it’s fine, it can’t be Wednesday, you’ve got the wrong day. You were tired when you set your alarm last night after all. Just check your calendar. No, no it’s actually Wednesday, this is happening, you’re just going to have to accept it.
Stage Two: Regret
It doesn’t matter what you did last night, in this moment, you’re going to regret it. It doesn’t matter how early you went to bed, it simply wasn’t early enough. You should have gone to bed half an hour earlier, then you wouldn’t feel like you’ve just been hit by a truck. You knew you had this lecture! It’s been on the timetable since 0th week. For God’s sake, why didn’t you give yourself enough sleep? Why did you have to watch that rubbish film? It was three hours long! You start to hate the friend that was sat up chatting with you. You regret that you ever let them into your room! Despite affectionately thinking about how much you like them as they left your room last night, you find yourself starting to despise them. You blame them for your current situation. Even if you were up working, finally finishing that essay that’s been bugging you, you’re suddenly filled with resentment as stage two morphs quickly into stage three.
Stage Three: Anger
For a brief moment, you hate everything. You hate the tutor that set you the essay that kept you up. In fact it seems oddly unfair that, in trying to be a diligent student who stays on top of deadlines and attends lectures, you open yourself up to this kind of suffering. You hate the lecturer that set a nine a.m. lecture in the first place! You hate the course you chose, it’s not even fun and it’s certainly not worth getting up this early for. You hate your neighbour with his three contact hours a term who’s still in bed and has been since last Tuesday. You hate your college. You hate the Uni. You hate the people you can hear talking outside. Dear God you just hate everything and most of all, you hate yourself for putting yourself through this.
Stage Four: Determination
No! You made a promise! This term, things were going to be better. You’d get up early, shower, throw on a killer outfit, and attend your nine a.m. before heading straight to the library for another productive day. Plus this lecture is really interesting and just super helpful for your course. There’s no way you’re going to miss it. You can do this! You believe in yourself! For one shining moment everything is fine. You’ve got your life in order, you’re on top of things and you’re In fact, you’re not even that tired. Get up and go! Go on. Just move. It’s not that hard, just swing your legs out of bed and hit the shower.
Stage Five: Resignation
But then again. Your bed is so comfortable. It’s so warm. If you’re this tired, are you really going to pay attention? The lecture’s not even that useful anyway, and you can never hear it. Maybe they’ll put the notes on weblearn, and even if they don’t, I can always ask a friend. Someone must have gone to it. Nah, it’s better to stay in bed for another hour. You can try again next week.
And so once again, you roll over, pull the duvet up under your chin, drown out the guilt you feel every time you hear people talking in the quad, ignore the inquisitive texts of the friends waiting for you in the lodge, close your eyes and drift peacefully back to sleep. The cycle is complete, the same one you go through almost every day.
