Jonas Doerr – Opinion Columnist
The worst sound in the world is not nails on a chalkboard. It’s not metal on metal. It’s not whiny children. It’s the sound of my alarm going off at 5:15 every Tuesday morning. See, every Tuesday morning I get up early to open up the Lund Center, and every morning I glare at my alarm with hatred as I try to turn it off before my roommate wakes up. There is something intensely vile about alarms going off early in the morning, but I push through my grogginess and wake up every Tuesday.
This complete abhorrence to early morning alarms is certainly not limited to just me. Plenty of Gustavus students dread having to get up early in the morning, whether for an 8 a.m or an early morning workout session. Maybe they even dread having to get up for a 9 a.m. or a 10:30 class, if the night before was particularly long. No matter what time that alarm goes off, it’s not a very welcome sound.
But getting up early actually has some profound benefits. You see, after I push through the repulsive moment of waking up, the morning usually goes pretty well. First of all, I get to enjoy the quiet of the early morning; it’s just me, the birds, the breeze, and the occasional custodians who somehow woke up even earlier than I did. If you ever have a chance to thank the custodians for their work, please do. It’s a difficult and thankless job, and they do a lot of it while most of us are still sleeping.
The calm of the early morning campus usually has a relaxing effect on me. After getting worked up about the alarm, the complete peacefulness of 5:30 a.m feels almost meditative. In fact, this sets me up perfectly to be extremely productive. Since nothing is going on this early in the morning, there are few distractions to steal me away from what I need to get done. Nobody is awake to text, the stresses of the day are still far off, and most news sites haven’t even posted their articles yet. This solitary universe creates an environment in which it is simple to focus and chug away at piles of homework.
And with such a fantastic start to the day, is it a surprise that the rest of the day will often go well too? There’s a reason there are so many proverbs about the merits of getting up early. “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man happy, healthy and wise,” Ben Franklin said. Although I don’t know how he can justify that waking up early makes one wise, the happy and healthy part is accurate.
After beginning the day so productively, the rest of the morning seems to fall into place like a pre-made jigsaw puzzle. Hard things seem easy and easy things are a joy to do. There’s a feeling you get of really living when you’re up before the sun. When the afternoon comes around, a little bit of tiredness sets in, which sets up a brief siesta perfectly. When you awake well-rested and refreshed from your short nap, the afternoon and evening will fly by. You really will feel happier and healthier.
That’s not to say this is easy to do. Like I said before, hearing that alarm go off in the morning is an awful sound, especially if you aren’t in the habit of waking up at that time. It takes a strong effort the night before to go to bed early enough, especially since college lifestyles often encourage late nights. It takes even more willpower to get up and hop out of bed when that ringtone that you thought was cool when you chose it but now hate starts ringing.
The good thing is, studies have found that your willpower is like a muscle that gets tired and can get stronger. After firmly resisting a scrumptious plate of cookies, it’ll be a lot harder to avoid the pie too, but on the other hand each time you do you get a little better at resisting the next time. Your willpower works the same way for getting up in the morning, too. The first time is the hardest. The second time is still hard. But by the thirtieth time, people wonder what superpower you have to be able to get up so early every day.
Getting up early isn’t for the faint of heart. Yet there are many benefits to doing it. It feels peaceful, it starts your day off well, and it strengthens your willpower. It will even make you more productive just in time for those midterms coming up in two weeks. As long as that realization doesn’t keep you up tonight, consider waking up early, because after all, the early bird gets the midterm.