To all the eagerly optimistic freshmen in college, 8am classes don’t appear to be a big deal. When thinking back on how early you got up for high school, this is practically sleeping in. The mindset is, “Why not get all of my classes out of the way early so I have the entire day?” However, it is time to kiss those dreams of productivity goodbye. Despite all the plans you made, after a late night of paper writing, by the time the morning of the class comes around, all those dreams are fading. The harsh reality is actually over tiredness, crankiness, and an overall fiasco of a morning. This is a list compiled of actual experiences for how to survive those mornings.

1. Set 10 consecutive alarms.

Choose 5, separated 5 minutes apart with different sounds. Then proceed to snooze and sleep through all of them.

2. Lay in Bed.

Why start the morning anxious? Take your time and give yourself some time to just mentally wake up. You don’t want to rush into anything too quickly.

3. Take a shower.

What could be a better for waking up than a nice, warm shower? Really spend time in there planning for the week. Also, you can’t skip the rinse and repeating cycle.

4. Prepare a well balanced breakfast.

The breakfast recipes off of Pinterest usually work best. But always have a box of poptarts on hand because you used all your time to make it and end up grabbing a pop tart to go instead.

5. Lay out your outfit the night before.

Everything is waiting nicely for you in the morning, from the cardigan to the shoes. Then wake up and realize you had no idea what you were thinking last night and choose a new outfit.

6. Make a cup of coffee.

It’s a perfectly brewed cup of coffee complimented by your favorite creamer. Just as you’re ready to take a sip, you spill it all over the outfit you laid out the night before.

7. Choose a new outfit.

You now realize it’s nearing 8am and you don’t feel like looking cute anymore so you default to pick out your best pair of sweatpants instead.

8. Preheat the curling iron to make up for the poor outfit choice.

There is your one shot at pulling it back together. Depending on how this goes you can go from effortlessly cute to straight off the streets.

9. Text friends for moral support.

At this point you need all the moral support you can get because you’ve already mentally convinced yourself that you just aren’t going to class that day.

10. Sprint into class as the professor is walking in.

Don’t worry about the looks you will receive, you survived the morning of your 8am class.

11. Prepare for a quiz that’s at the start of class.

The finishing touch to the morning of an 8am is to take a seat and cram in all your assigned reading you didn’t do the night before.

Next time, take these stages into consideration when planning your classes for next semester. Happy college.