College is great for so many reasons, one of them being that your day doesn’t start as early as 8am like it does in high school, unless you choose to or get stuck with an 8am lecture. I recommend doing what you can to avoid that. But generally, classes start later for most students, so what can you do with all that extra time?
That bonus hour or two can be prime time for getting work done. You’ll find that as you go through your day attending classes, having meetings with your clubs, practicing a sport if you’re a student athlete, the last thing you’re going to want to do is finish that problem set or start that reading for discussion the next day. You’ve had a long day of walking and thinking and socializing and all of that is tiring. Rather than chugging some Cherry Tree coffee and powering through all the work, maybe finish a little bit of it and go to bed. Wake up early enough the next morning for you to do what you didn’t get to. You’ll be refreshed, rested, and you won’t have to fight the temptations of distraction by your peers, because they’ll all be asleep! The morning is also a great time to review before an exam (although you should start way before the morning of to review).
Exercising the mind is important, but so is exercising the body, which is why the morning is a great time to hit up Sumer’s Recreation Center and get in a workout before your classes start! The Sumer’s Recreation Center opens as early as 6am for you to use one of their many cardio machines, or their free weights! This way, you don’t have to make time later in the day to visit the gym, and you can avoid the afternoon/early evening crowd. After you work up a sweat, you can grab some breakfast at BD, take a shower, and head to class with some endorphins carrying you through the rest of the morning. It’s a really refreshing way to start off.
If you want a calmer start to your morning, one without physical or mental stress, you can simply wake up early to give yourself ample time to calmly get ready for the day. Take a nice shower, pick out your outfit for the day, basically give yourself ample time to look presentable if you so choose to. From there you can head to Bear’s Den (which I’ll be calling BD in every blog from now on) to grab a wholesome breakfast and coffee from Cherry Tree Café. This is a pretty typical start to a morning as seen on TV.
If none of those seems appealing to you, you can always roll out of bed 20 minutes before class starts, brush your teeth, grab your backpack (optional), put on some shoes (also optional, but recommended), and speed-walk straight to class in sweatpants without showering. This option is quite liberating. Plus, it’s very possible to make it from the South 40 to Brookings in as quickly as 11 minutes if you’re determined.
