This is a Typical Day

My phone goes off and its incessant beeping pierces the air and echoes within my bedroom; with my eyes still shut, I feel for my phone to hit snooze and finally make the dreaded sound stop. Then, I snuggle up in my covers once again and fall back asleep only to hear my mom scream over and over again for me to “get up or else I’ll be late for school”, so I finally collect the little energy I have and throw the covers off and stagger my way downstairs, shivering and muttering to myself, “Why do I have to wake up this early if the sun has not even risen?”, and then with my eyes half closed, I plop myself on a chair in the kitchen and try to eat my breakfast in peace even though I don’t have any kind of appetite this early in the morning and my mom is trying to talk my ear off, and after I’m done scraping some food off my plate, I stumble back up the stairs and do my usual routine, brush my teeth, wash my face, snatch some clothes from my closet that somewhat match, put on the clothes, put on deodorant, brush my hair, doing it all in a hurry because I managed to get a peek at the clock in the midst of getting ready and saw that I was running late, so I run down the stairs as quickly as I can, frantically collect everything I need for the day and stuff it into my backpack, slip on my shoes, and continue to run and sit down in the car where my mom has been waiting for at least ten minutes, ready to leave. At last, I can catch my breath but I am still dreaming about being asleep in my cozy bed. Next thing I know, we pull up to a long line of cars and my stress kicks in and my mind is rambling once again, “What if you’re late? Your teacher is definitely going to mark you tardy. I can’t get another tardy because I’m sure I’m almost up to three tardies even though none of my teachers tell me so and I can’t get four tardies or else I’m going to be stuck in Saturday school which is the last thing I need. Okay… Maybe I’ll be able to make it. It should only take like a maximum of five minutes to go through this line, right? Then, I’ll have like one minute to get to class if that’s even possible…” and the line is trudging along slowly and then I finally reach a point where I can get out and run into the building and as I stumble into the building, I catch eye of a clock on the wall, counting down the seconds until class starts so I sprint down the stairwell and into my classroom right before the bell shrills. Out of breath, I walk more calmly to my seat and have a tiny break from all of the chaos but then start thinking to myself, “Oh, great. Now I have to spend an eternity sitting in these uncomfortable wooden desks” and then the day begins with the teacher’s drowsy voice which is drowned out by my daydreaming, wishing I could be asleep at that very moment and then I tune back in momentarily to know what homework or studying I have to do for the next day and then the bell rings after what feels like hours on end and everyone rushes to go out the same small doorway and I clamor with the rest of them to escape the teacher and all of the stress he or she just piled on top of me and then I enter the crowded hallway, flooded with the rest of the school, and try to push myself forward to get to yet another class and this routine repeats for another five class periods only varying slightly if there are some stressful assessments, with every minute as uneventful and boring as the next, and when the clock strikes 2:09, the painful process of sitting and listening to teachers go on and on is over and I quickly escape my version of prison, school, sick of all of its nonsense, and plop on a couch at home and take a cat nap. However, when I wake up to my phone alarm once again, I can’t manage to pull myself out from under my blanket and face the world and all of the worries that followed me home from school, including homework and studying, but after at least ten minutes of laying on the couch, doing absolutely nothing, I force myself to get up and do all of the tedious and stressful work only because I need to get a 4.0 GPA to please my parents and get into a decent college but I easily get distracted about every five minutes and have piles of work from all of my teachers so I am really inefficient and go to bed extremely late and then once I wake up again, I have to repeat this exhausting day.

               Now, this is the one way I could think about my typical day full of “petty frustrating crap” (Wallace 235), but if I actually clear my head and choose to think consciously, I could have a less dreary and more optimistic life. Instead of sighing at the sound of my alarm and complaining about how early it is, I could think of it as a refreshing early start to my day so I can get all of my work done earlier and not stay up as late to finish it. Instead of freaking out about my workload or even the long line of cars, I could find some way to relieve the stress maybe by working hard, organizing my time better, putting my phone away when necessary, and waking up earlier to eliminate failures, distractions, and tardies. Instead of passing my time in school by daydreaming and ignoring the teacher, I could pay attention and make the most of the situation by actually learning something even if it might be the most boring topic. Instead of doing the work just to please my parents and get into college, I could learn to enjoy discovering new information. In these sentences, the key word is “could”. It indicates that I would have to use sheer will and mental effort to “choose to think this way” (Wallace 236) to make my own life better.