It's a psychologically proven fact that people my age -teenagers- would be better off not waking up early, for they will amount to nothing of good use around that time anyways. We'd all rather stay in bed and, instead of 'doing' morning, doing afternoons. So when things like work, school or your cat force you to wake up early nonetheless, a non-morning-person like myself has a little bit of trouble with, well, getting up. I'm sure I'm no exception when it comes to bad mornings. But with me, there's an actually 7-step plan to it.

STEP 1: AWAKENING The alarm clock goes off and the most annoying radio station I could possibly find makes its way, awfully loud, through my speakers. So loud, in fact, that I am awake at once. See, waking up is not the hard part.

STEP 2: GRANTING With one easy click on a button, stupid-me turns off the alarm clock, turns around and falls back asleep. But not after intelligent-me first resets the alarm to a different time about twenty minutes later, so I can wake up all over again, granting myself an extra twenty minutes.

STEP 3: TRYING After the second alarm goes off, I tell myself 'oh come on, you're not gonna set it a third time, just get the hell up', and so I do. The key here is to find something to do, like have a glass of water, go to the bathroom, anything, as long as you're not just standing there, next to your bed, longing to go back in.

STEP 4: TEMPTING Sadly, said activities last about a minute and a half. By that time you're cold and miserable and your bed looks so incredibly inviting... And there you go, right back in. And it's even warmer than when you left it...

STEP 5: SLEEPING Sadly, this step is inevitable in the process. I am weak, so I go back to bed, and I am tired, so I fall back asleep. I either wake up a couple of hours later, like an idiot, realizing I overslept and am a couple of hours late for school, or I progress to step 6.

STEP 6: SUCCEEDING After lying in there for a couple of minutes, you realize you have to get up sooner or later. And though later would be my choice of action, sooner is the cold hand of reality, slapping you in the face. And there you go, out of bed again, and this time, for real.

STEP 7: REWARDING In my case, the only way step 6 ever happens is if I think about a large cup of delicious, hot coffee awaiting me downstairs. Of course it's not in fact standing there on the kitchen table, but soon enough I'll be sitting at that same table myself, having made this delicious reward, feeling very unready but at least caffeinated enough to get my sleepy ass to school.

Learn more about this author, Emilie West.
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