Ah, the dreaded 8 a.m. college course. Its negative stigma makes it a thing to be feared and completely avoided by those who just know how much of a bad idea it can be. Think about it: You have your alarm set at, say, 7:00 a.m. to fully wake up, wash, get dressed and then rush out of the door, with bagel in your mouth and a cup of coffee in your hand, to make it to class on time. Not to mention, you probably slept at midnight or 1 a.m. a few hours before because you had to wrap up your other classes' work. Unfortunately, there are certain classes that you have to take for whatever reason that just so happen to be that early in the morning. And I'm in that situation this semester.
Because I plan to spend the spring semester of my junior year in Geneva, Switzerland, I need to have at least a year's worth of college-level French up my sleeve. French 101 had an 8 a.m. section, which was the only time I can possibly fit it into my schedule, and subsequently had to register for the early-bird course. I was definitely anxious about it; first-year was full of 10 a.m. classes, which was definitely something I could handle, but I still struggled with late-night study sessions and then waking up groggy and not at all ready for the upcoming day. This is even worse because I'm the type of person to sleep until 1 p.m. on weekends, if necessary. How, then, was I supposed to get a reasonable amount of sleep between writing numerous papers and waking up at 6:30 a.m.? (Sadly, I take a while to get ready...)
The first day of classes was, of course, the first day of 8 a.m. French. To my surprise, I was not as tired as I had anticipated. Maybe it was because I could not get a deep enough sleep, but I was fairly awake, even though I distinctly remember the sun beginning to rise. In fact, I felt refreshed, rejuvenated even. And that feeling continued for the rest of the day. My first day of sophomore year was enjoyable and I loved every class. I still do.
I thought this only happened to me because it was the first day, that I would lose all of my excitement and energy by the time the third or fourth class rolled around. But it's quite the opposite: I'm rolling into the third week of the semester and I wake up every morning at the same time with the same amount of fervor as I did the first few times. I don't know what changed and I don't think that I'll ever be able to pinpoint it. Now that I have a few more hours in my day, I find that get a lot more work done.
Knowing how lazy I can get, this is definitely an improvement and a practice that I hope to maintain.
