Every single student at Staples High School must sit in his or her first period class by 7:30 a.m. each weekday morning.
But not every Staples student has the same process getting to that point.
Every Monday through Friday, nearly 2,000 students wake up earlier than most adults, however begrudgingly, in order to get ready for school. Although everyone brushes teeth, checks phones, and gets dressed, the details vary from slight to major differences that make morning routines unique.
While most people have to fight through a drowsy haze each morning, the winter heralds a slightly different routine for Sam Ellinwood ’14; instead of rolling out of bed and heading to school, he rolls out of bed at 5:30 a.m. and heads to the YMCA to exercise.
“Obviously this is not very enjoyable for me, but in the winter I ran track after school, so I didn’t have much time to do weight lifting other than before school,” Ellinwood said. Although this is not very common, he’s certainly not alone. Some teams, such as boys’ baseball and girls’ lacrosse have been known to work out early together before class begins.
A similar custom calls for Sarah Cooperman ’13 to wake up around 5 a.m. so she can get to the pool on time for swim practice. “Nothing like a nice dip in some chlorine before school,” Cooperman lamented.
Especially for someone like Cooperman, whose workout schedule is very demanding, breakfast really is the most important meal of the day. She agrees that her breakfast, consisting of toast with peanut butter, is “always a high part” of the morning.
“You need to eat breakfast,” Colin Davis ’13 said, who opts for eating egg-and-cheese sandwiches during morning free periods.
On the other hand, some like Will Horne ’13, “used to eat breakfast, but now I sleep more and forego breakfast because sleep is the best.”
Sleep is perhaps the one of the most enjoyable activities of Staples students, and many treasure every minute they can salvage before arising. “My mornings have gotten groggier with the complete lack of sleep that I’ve had during my time at Staples,” Cooperman said, and judging by the general zombie-like demeanor of first period classes, many others experience the same problem.
There is one common enemy to the early rise: the alarm clock.
Ellinwood admits a hatred for the device that wakes him up each morning, as does Cooperman.
“I really regret using my phone as my alarm clock because I tend to throw it across my room hoping it breaks so I can sleep more,” Jeanette van Dorsten ’13 said.
After her alarm sounds, van Dorsten’s morning routine consists of “slamming my bedside table for a little bit, slamming my head against my bed post a few times, and crying for ten minutes.”
Even those who don’t use an electronic alarm despise their wake-up call. Jack Dobrich ’13, who has his brother shake him awake at 6:30 a.m., confesses all sorts of attempts in order to end the intrusion.
“I sleep with a baseball bat next to my bed, in case of home intruders. So every morning when my brother wakes me up, I use it to build character in him,” Dobrich joked.
Once the initial struggle of waking up is finished, mornings tend to run similarly for each person. Everyone manages to either brave the bus or sit in a line of cars for 10 minutes, but, regardless of each person’s schedule, first period teachers are always the victims of groggy students who have pratically risen from the dead.
