In The Light of Night. by Arkadi

In The Light of Night. by Arkadi - January 2019 Scholarship Essay

I consider myself a night owl since I know that when the sun goes down my work capacity and productivity goes up. It seems wrong to stay up into the late night, it goes against the typically accepted social norm that the workday lasts 8 hours from early morning to sometime in the midday. It is the principle of the modern day that school, work, and other errands are started in the morning and may bleed into the day. Business hours typically last from morning into the evening. Essentially all life and its many modern day outlets for time spent are started or done around the morning. The evening and night however are usually reserved for the leisurely activities. The bars, clubs, restaurant dinners, or just spending time on the activities that you want to engage in. These activities are by contrast the ones that people would pamper themselves as part of the usual unwinding process after a busy morning followed by a demanding day.
My day starts with the grueling process of getting out of bed in the morning while fighting an uphill battle to rid myself of the early morning stupor imposed on myself by a short but deep sleep from the previous night. The remedy for this morning state is usually a strong cup of sweetened black coffee followed by some dried goods and a handful of cold water to the face. However, even with such tried and tested methods, results are not always guaranteed. Hopefully, this brief but informative explanation provides a window into the first couple of hours of my usual day and clears up any confusion on whether or not I may be a morning person.
What makes the night so special is that for some biological and socially related reasons, in the absence of light, people will usually resort to their homes or frequent some other brick and mortar establishment. While this may seem like a bland fact, it is a godsend for people such as myself, the elusive night owls. The buzz of the day can become exasperating and jarring but when the night falls, and everyone goes about their business from the comfort of the inside of some building, there is an unbelievable silence that pervades the environment. The kind of silence that stimulates creativity, and grants peace to those who seek it. I believe that the quiet surrounding of places such as libraries are the sole reason they are frequented by people such as college students who need a quiet and still environment to analyze and absorb information, a task not easy in loud, crowded places that overstimulate and/or distract such as in a moving car or in a loud cafe. The peace and quiet that are followed by the onset of night allow a person to reap the most of their creative capabilities by providing a static setting in which a person has unwavering focus and attention placed on whatever task it is they need to complete. Working at night however is kind of a double edged sword, while the work you produce and accomplish will be of higher quality, staying up late into the night cuts your sleeping schedule shorter and from personal experience, renders you slightly cognitively handicapped for the next day, a fact of poor sleep. With this in mind I try to stagger the days I work into the night by having at least a day or two in between the days I work late to catch up on sleep, for example, I would work late on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and have Tuesday and Thursday to make up for the spent nights. It is a sacrifice I am willing to make, because the quality of work that I produce in the late nights outweighs the need for a typical morning schedule. I usually am most productive at night and have the most bouts of inspiration and creativity at night. The still and static environment and the gain in efficiency and creativity and its positive effect on my work and workflow that is brought about by night has effectively converted me into a nocturnal being.