The Fight to Stay Awake: Morning Classes Edition
Any fifteen minutes before major class times--8:30 am, 12:00 pm and 2:30 pm-- Tim Horton's, McDonald's and Starbucks have student-filled lineups. These sleep-deprived, coffee-dependent students are getting their at-least-once daily dose of caffeine.
Students have early classes during the week for a multitude of reasons. Some have no choice but to take early classes because of a lack of remaining availabilities; some have no choice because the class was pre-determined. Others may have busy schedules in the afternoon, be it because of work or sports, which require them to start school early in order to finish early.
In at least one morning class, you can find students eating their breakfast even doing their makeup during teacher lectures; mostly, you'll find half the students with a Tim's or McDonald's coffee placed at a perfect distance from their arm, propped up to support their sleeping heads. The first ten minutes of 8 am classes are dedicated to students posting a snapchat story of their coffee with captions such as "I hate morning classes", "why did I even come to this class" or "thank God for coffee". Interestingly enough, almost everyone I've spoken to during my time at Dawson has had a morning class that starts at 10 am or earlier, more than once a week.
Marissa has a morning class every day of the week. With her schedule, she barely sleeps and deals with her early classes by drinking RedBull and coffee up to three a day: "I have one in my bag right now, actually." Franco has five morning classes per week; he consumes one cup of coffee per day to keep him going. Simon has five morning classes per week as well and gets little to no sleep; "This was my worst week-[I slept] six hours in [a matter of] three days." He deals with his extreme sleep deprivation by taking plenty of naps and has an occasional coffee to get him through the week.
Twin sisters Toula and Assimi have four morning classes each per week. Neither of them sleeps enough to function without coffee, about one per day where they start early. One of their friends, Maria-Elena, only has three classes that start at 10 am or earlier, yet she still doesn't get a good amount of sleep; "I get max four hours of sleep per night." Because of this sleep deprivation, she drinks a coffee about 3-4 times a week.
There are some students who have the chance to drop their morning classes, such as Mack who "[wishes she] dropped the class," it being her only morning course, twice a week. Even with her small number of morning classes, Mack is sleep deprived and deals with it by "suffering" without the consumption of caffeine. Others, like Deborah, didn't have that opportunity as she says, "sometimes we have no choice but to take these classes so early." With four morning classes, Deborah drinks three coffees a day, sometimes 12 a week--cut down form up to five on some days--and naps during the day to power through to the end.
Next time you come to Dawson, before heading to class, take a trip to Alexis Nihon at 8 am, 10 am, 12 pm or 2:30 pm. Try to pick out the sleep deprived college students needing a caffeine fix from beloved Tims of McDeez to supply them with ammunition in their fight to stay awake.