There once was a time when I would pour my cup of coffee at the crisp hour of 7 a.m. and listen to the birds chirp. You know, the good stuff. Seriously, I had the kind of mornings shown in movies.
Even though I knew I would never wake up and stretch like a Disney princess, I still knew I would wake up after the sun. Only after I poured my coffee would my day finally begin.
Interestingly enough, my mornings still start roughly the same now that I am in college. I wake up at 6 a.m. instead of 7 a.m., but, as we all know when it comes to sleep, one hour doesn’t really make a difference. Who needs it anyway, right? Plus, in the caffeinated world we live in, I’ll just have a second cup of coffee to make up for the lost hour of sleep.
These new times and extra cups of coffee were not hard to adjust to. In fact, now, I don’t mind a good sunrise and never have to choose between a vanilla latte or caramel macchiato when I have enough time to drink both.
When I look at it this way, my college mornings almost start better than they ever have before. It’s my nights that have radically changed, and I don’t mean in the wild way most people would think they would.
Now, I no longer have any concept of what late is. Even worse, the biological clock I have always been told could regulate itself needs some desperate help. Now, I typically start to pour my fourth cup of coffee at 10 p.m. to stay alive.
Essentially, 10 p.m. is the new 5 p.m. After a long day of doing all the things every student does, I come home, kick back and get back to work all over again. Sometimes, I am not even crunching to meet that infamous 11:59 p.m. deadline. Instead, I use these night hours to finish all the cleaning I should have done Sunday or bake the cookies I have been promising my roommate. The best part? I don’t even have to do any of this quietly, because my entire apartment complex is awake, too.
I can hear the charming footsteps of my neighbors stomping on my roof as they probably do the same chores I am doing. My pre-med roommate is busy keeping the printer humming as she prints out all her study guides. No matter what we are all up to, we are definitely up to something, and we are usually just getting started.
These days, I get a burst of energy when I see it’s only 12 a.m., because I know I can at least get 2 more hours of work in before actually going to sleep for a quick nap and waking up, ready to do it all over again.
Quite literally overnight, I have become nocturnal. Instead of sleeping under the stars, I’m looking right back at them amid all the other things I want to get working on. Thanks to my mostly 24-hour college campus, I can stay up all hours of the night without it feeling like nighttime anyway.
The local CVS Health is open 24 hours, Library West is open 24 hours — even the gym doesn’t close until 1 a.m. That means I can shop for groceries, study and workout, all before the sun comes up.
So I do, because, thanks to college, 11:59 p.m. is not the end. It is only the beginning.
Victoria Fortier is a UF journalism sophomore. Her column appears on Fridays.
