Rebekah+B’s+2016+OpEd+Article

Please stop hatin on mornings

Mornings are extremely unappreciated. When forced to be awake, people sulk through their mornings like frozen slugs who never woke up and on the weekend sleep completely through the afternoon. I’m not here to tell you not to sleep in, just to say that mornings are my favorite time of day and I think they deserve more recognition.

After flipping through Forbes Top 10 Advantages of Waking up Early, I’m pretty impressed. Early risers are supposed to get a higher GPA (by one whole point!), be better planners, and get more exercise. Well I can’t say any of these things are true for me, I can say that this morning before the sun was up, I was awake, drinking coffee finishing homework.

In the morning it’s cold and my mind is clear and I have my whole day ahead of me. I’m the only one awake in my house. No one is blasting the volume on the news. No one is talking to me. If you go get a donut you bet your bottom dollar it'll be the freshest donut you've ever had if its before 7am. There's this whole secret society of people who walk their dogs early in the mornings.There's no line at Vons or the donut shop or anywhere. Traffic is 0. Waking up early helps you remember your dreams. No one is awake to judge you doing whatever you want to do.

So if you wonder how its possible to wake up early let me just say, I love sleep. And not to brag but I get a sufficient amount of sleep pretty much every night. And sleep is a really important thing for your body. So for me it’s pretty simple. Go to bed early. Wake up early. The crazy thing is, if you go to sleep early enough, its really not difficult to get up before the "butt-crack-o'-dawn".

So why has society just accepted this common stay up late/ wake up late habit? If I tell someone I woke up super early they’ll be flabbergasted but if someone says they stayed up until 2 am it’s pretty normal. In this article, [|Why teenagers can’t get up in the morning], It’s said that our biological clocks are messed up and melatonin, a sleepiness drug, just kicks in more gradually for us than for adults, making it more difficult for us to go to bed early. So its understandable.

But next time you're planning to stay up 'til 3am cramming or watching Netflix, consider going to bed early, getting a full 7-8 hours, and waking up early to do whatever the heck you want to do.