by Jonathann Giammarco
The sound of my alarm hits like a hammer at 6:00 a.m. Sleep is a scarce commodity during the school week, and on Wednesday morning, the wake-up chime coming out of my cell phone can be particularly brutal. I’m up in a few seconds, on unsteady feet and with mind full of cotton, and with great effort, I stumble to the kitchen in search of my alarm. Long ago, I learned that I cannot trust myself to get up in the early morning, so I hide my alarm in the kitchen before I go to sleep. If I can get my hands on my alarm clock before I’m fully awake, I’m liable to shut it off, and sleep through my first class. That would be the absolute worst thing I could do.
People like me, traditional MPA students with non-accounting backgrounds, have a lot of ground to cover in one year. Many of us are spending the fall semester completing the program’s required core classes. Due to a quirk in the academic schedule, the majority of these classes fall back-to-back-to-back on Mondays and Wednesdays. That adds up to an intimidating six-hour block, with lectures running from 8:00 a.m. straight through to 2:00 p.m. The first class of the day, Intermediate Financial Accounting, has a tough reputation, and the lectures are so important that I would be taking a huge academic gamble to miss one.
By the time I am able to track down my phone and shut off my alarm, I am generally lucid enough to get my morning routine under way. One cup of water goes in the microwave and then into my french press for my morning coffee (pumpkin spice!). As the coffee steeps, I prepare a bowl of muesli and milk, tune to Morning Edition on the computer, and putter around my closet in search of clothes. I have to check my scheduler before getting dressed. If there are recruiting events in the afternoon, I’ll wear a button-up shirt and pants. Otherwise, it will be jeans or shorts and a t-shirt.
By 6:45 a.m., I’m usually pressing to get out the door. I have to make sure that all of the notebooks for the day are accounted for and in order. The day’s lunch comes out of the fridge and goes into my overstuffed backpack. On my way out the door, I grab my bicycle helmet and my bike lights.
At 7:00 a.m., the ride to school is pleasant. My apartment is located in Hyde Park, a neighborhood north of the UT campus. With the neighborhood streets practically to myself, I take the time to listen to the owls make their early-morning calls and to study the small craftsman homes that line the roads. My bike ride takes me along the UT shuttle route on Speedway, and I can’t help but smile to myself as I zoom by the bus stops full of long faces, their eyes anxiously looking up the road in search of their late buses.
I build 30 minutes into my schedule in case I ever have a flat tire on my way to school, but I’ve been lucky so far this year. This means that I always arrive at the business school 30 to 40 minutes before class. Despite being a half-hour early, I am never the first person in the lecture hall. When I walk in the door, there’s almost always music playing, and curious props are set up in front of the lectern–a sign that Professor Koonce has already been in to prepare for class. Professor Koonce likes to annotate her lectures with topical props and music. For her last lecture about hedges, she set up a plush toy hedgehog on the front table.
I’m always just the second student to arrive. My classmate Brian, an early morning superstar, is always there first, reading the paper and doing the crossword puzzle to start off the day.
With over a half hour of time to spare, I do my last minute due diligence. I sort my papers, read my notes and fill up my water bottle. People begin filing into the classroom at 7:50 a.m., and within minutes, the lecture hall is jammed. I sort my notes one last time, and mentally run through my daily schedule. The minute hand on the wall clock ticks toward 8 o’clock.
The day begins!