I am a morning person.<\p>
I think that I wasn’t born this way, but through severe behavioral modifications, I have adapted. Here is what I think led me to proudly proclaim Good Morning with such glee in my voice that elicits a grumble from every coffee-holding, head-hanging commuter.<\p>
When I was a small child, my mom was a nurse’s assistant. As such, she had to be at work at 5am. I remember getting ready for school at 4am, so that she could drop me off at the sitters. I remember sitting on the bed, pulling up those ridiculous catholic schoolgirl socks, and noticing that the clock with the flippy numbers read 4:02.<\p>
My high school started at 7:35. That was when the first class was. If you were really lucky, you somehow managed to get gym or a studyhall for first period. I, however, being one of the chosen, had Calculus first period my senior year. It was dark when class started. Sometimes in the winter, the moon would shine in the window. I hated math. I hated this particular teacher. I hated that he taught using an overhead projector, meaning that the classroom was dark. I hated that the radiator was to the left of my desk, and if I so desired, I could have been really comfortable while sleeping. I was also in this competition with the local math whiz for the highest scores on the tests. Hence, I had to be alert. I soon found that if I was overly cheerful, it would throw the teacher off and he would leave me alone.<\p>
I worked at an Au Bon Pain for five years during college. At the beginning, I was naïve. I thought that the only way I was going to get the job was going to be if I would start work at the ungodly hour of 5:30 (or as I liked to say: the ass-crack of dawn). This ended up being good. I liked my boss. Four years or so into this job, I learned about the magic elixir known as coffee.<\p>
During my last year at ABP, I started my graduate school program. After finally getting funded, I realized that I could quit my job. After all of those years of having to get up super early, sleeping until 7am was heaven. And then I realized something else that is heavenly:
No respectable graduate student is at lab before 9am. If I got there at 5am, several things would happen:
I would be able to use all the equipment at once.
I would be able to leave around 2.
I would be able to annoy my boss by telling him all of the stuff that I had accomplished before he had come in.<\p>
I think the thing that bothers people the most about me being a morning person is:
I like Mondays too.
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