With a new year come new goals, and one of my New Year’s resolutions is to get to school on time. My reasoning behind this is that gradually, throughout my high school years, I’ve seen myself getting lazier and lazier in the morning. It went from leaving early to leaving right on time, and then it got to a point where I was getting to school late every day during this year, my junior year. This heavily affected my grade due to my first period at Health Academy having a ‘professionalism’ system where tardies take off points.
When the journalism assignment came up to try and break a bad habit, I instantly knew I had to tackle this tardiness of mine. The purpose of this challenge is so that I can build a healthier habit of waking up early and managing my time efficiently in the morning.
Some of the things that contribute to being late in the morning include; waking up late, taking too long to shower, getting lost on my phone, and most notably, overestimating how much time it takes for me to get to school. I’m pretty fortunate to live only 15-20 minutes away from school, but part of the problem is that I always think I have more time than I actually do.
Usually in the morning, I get up around 7:30–7:35, even though my alarm is set at 7:20. After that, I go straight to the shower, and I brush my teeth in the shower because otherwise I’d freeze in the San Francisco weather. I typically leave the shower at 7:50, or in some cases, 7:40–7:45, which leaves me about 20–30 minutes in order to blow dry my hair and get dressed. I usually don’t eat breakfast, but on days I’m ready super early, I’ll sit down and eat breakfast.
My strategy going into this challenge was to wake up at 7:20–7:30 and leave the house around 8:10–8:15, which will give me adequate time to arrive at school on time. I felt motivated by the fear that colleges might see how many tardies I have in the morning and that it might affect my chances of getting accepted.
On the first day of this challenge, I started off strong by waking up at 7:24 in the morning and heading straight to the shower. I was on top of this this morning because I even got to eat some of my mom’s breakfast that she made me. I left at 8:15 and arrived earlier than I ever have at 8:35.
Contrary to the first day, my second day started off frantic as I woke up late at 7:39. I tried my hardest to get ready in time and left the house at 8:20. I thought I was done for, but the bus came right away, and the driver drove super fast that day. It was like a god’s blessing in the way it saved me that day. I was happy that I ended up getting to school at 8:38 because I really didn’t want to lose this challenge this early on.
By day 3, I think I had started to get into the habit of getting to school early because I woke up at 7:33, got everything ready for school, and left the house at 8:16, leaving me with a whopping 8 minutes to spare getting to school. I have never been this early, so this was like a milestone for me. I ended up getting school breakfast, which was surprisingly not bad.
But Day 4 is when I broke my old habits, which started creeping back in, and I caved in to using my phone. After waking up and showering as usual, I decided to watch Instagram reels and lost track of time. I left the house at 8:26 and got to school 1 minute late. Luckily, that day we had Coach Winterling as our sub, so I didn’t get marked late. It sort of felt like I hadn’t actually lost the challenge, so my streak of being on time technically didn’t end.
What I didn’t know was that I would continue to relapse on day 5. I woke up and showered as usual, except today I had trouble deciding what to wear. I tried on at least two outfits before picking the right one, leaving me no choice but to walk into class late. Walking into class late felt normal, as I’m used to being late.
On day 6, I got to school earlier than I ever did in the challenge. I followed my usual routine of showering in the morning and got out early at 7:45, which left me a lot of time to blow-dry my hair and get dressed. I left at 8:18 as usual, but today the bus driver drove really fast, so I got to school even earlier than day 3 at 8:31. I ended up getting breakfast again, which was a tasty blueberry bagel, and eating it in class.
On day 7, I woke up early at 7:33 and felt energetic, hopping right into the shower and then changing right after. I decided to leave early today and got to school at 8:35, which gave me some time to play on my phone in class.
This challenge made me realize that it isn’t that hard to get to school on time, especially for me, who only lives about 15-20 minutes away from school. I feel like the main thing is overestimating how fast I can get to school, because I notice that it’s a trend amongst people that live close to school, including myself. Something to takeaway from this challenge is that I should keep a distance from my phone in the morning.
