Before the World Wakes by Matthew

Before the World Wakes by Matthew - January 2019 Scholarship Essay

The early bird gets the worm, as the saying goes, and I couldn’t agree more. My alarm rings at 6:30, I’m heading to gym by 7:00, eating breakfast at 8:00, and walking to the library before the vast majority of campus has even woken up. The library is empty, so I get to slide into one of the comfortable booths. It’s a Saturday morning and a full day of studying for finals lays before me.

My entire dorm building calls me crazy, saying, “First of all, how can you wake up so early, but also, how can you study so much??” I shrug my shoulders and say something along the lines of, “I’m paying $40,000 for college, might as well get the most out of it, right?” And after getting my first set of college grades back with a 4.00 GPA, I guess I quickly found what it took to reach my goal of straight A’s – waking up early.

Last quarter, I had 4 days each week with 7:00/8:00am classes, so I was awake and in class before most of my friends. This quarter, I only have 2 days a week with early classes, meaning I could technically sleep in for three days a week. However, I’m worried I won’t have enough time to study. Because of this, I am implementing a system of waking up at 7:00am each morning, exercising, eating, and studying, in hopes that I can continue to accurately learn the material in each of my classes and excel on tests.

Now, why am I more productive in the morning? To be honest, I’m not sure if I could pinpoint the exact reason, but there are a few contributing factors that I can surely observe. First, I love the feeling of being productive, and the feeling of being productive while the rest of the world is asleep heightens the emotion. The thought that I have more hours of the day to be productive is exciting to me. Also, my brain, once it fully wakes up, is less cluttered in the morning, and I have an easier time focusing. My two roommates sleep till about 10:00am, and the feeling of working in my dark room at my desk, lamp on, wrapped in my fuzzy blanket makes me feel like I am speeding through my “to-do list” and getting in extra practice for my finals.

Through living in the dorms thus far, I have been fascinated with the different living styles of every resident. Some stay up past midnight studying but wake up late, some get up early like me, and well, some sleep in and go to bed early and seem to never study. I suppose everyone is different, and we all have our different schedules, but most importantly, we know what works best for us. Arguably more interesting is rooming with people with different schedules. I go to bed at a reasonable time, unlike my roommates, so it’s been an interesting experience to acclimate to a dorm room with three completely different people. However, I know that I have found what works best for me, and I need to respect what others have found to work best for them. So while I will keep getting up early, I respect the students who would rather stay up late, and hopefully, in the end, everyone will end up pleased with their decision.