? Seras’ Top Photo: October ?
Sophomore Jayden Nguyen playing in the WesCo men’s tennis district game.
The beginning of school brings up many things. Shopping, summer homework, fall drinks at Starbucks, etc. But there’s one small thing that makes me more upset than I could ever imagine.
Alarms.
Now, some people don’t need to set alarms to wake up by 6 in the morning. I, on the other hand, can’t. Could it be jealousy? Absolutely. In fact, it probably is. But my point isn’t to be self-aware, it’s to complain.
I blame all of my problems on Levi Hutchins. Name sound familiar? No? Good, because I had to search him up as well. He created the first alarm clock in 1787, and since then the world’s happiness has been depleting. His alarm woke people up at 4 a.m. He didn’t even need to wake up that early, Hutchins just thought people had to wake up before sunrise, which disclaimer: We don’t!
As I was saying before my tangent about Hutchins, alarms are extremely inconvenient to me and everything I believe in (AKA sleeping well). This might just be dramatic and stuff, but I think it’s not only unreasonable but also inhumane (exaggeration) that people are supposed to wake up before sunrise.
The most annoying thing about alarms for me is when people who are extremely heavy sleepers use them. More specifically, when they have separate alarms for 5 minute increments between them. A small example that I have to share is about my dear old father.
So, my dad, at the geriatric age of 39, needs an alarm to wake up for work. Which I think is crazy because he’s been waking up at the same time every workday for the past seven years. Anyway, his shift starts at 7 a.m., but he usually leaves for work at around 6:30 a.m. He gets ready in 15 minutes or less, so he doesn’t need to wake up super early. Sadly, he has alarms for every 5 minutes and we share a wall. It’s one of, if not the most inconvenient things in my life.
Second item of business, why do some alarms just make you angry? There are some ringtones that nobody should have. The ringtone for my alarm is depending on the day because I have a setting that makes my alarm any song from my playlist, but there’s some that you hear that just… make you want to know why? Why would someone listen to that and be happy to get out of bed?
For this example, I’ll be using Samsung and iOS. The most annoying Samsung ringtone, according to my friends and I, is the one called ‘Homecoming’. Which is kind of ironic to say, seeing how homecoming just passed, but that’s neither here nor there. As someone who used to use ‘Homecoming’ as their alarm ringtone, I can only describe it as the least aggressive of the Samsung ringtone options. And I am not exaggerating at all when I say that this ringtone is the absolute bane of my existence. But I won’t completely hate on alarms, or whatever ringtones people use.
On a more positive note, alarms have brought some small amount of good to us as a society. Keyword: some. Anyways, they aren’t 100% awful because some people enjoy waking up angry. The science of why alarms work is so weird. Now that I think about it, according to an article I read on a website called Bustle, it says that it’s because the sound of an alarm shocks the brain and body into waking up. So I guess the real question is, why do heavy-sleepers ignore their alarms? (If you read this and said ‘Because they’re sleeping heavily’ or anything along those lines, I am going to shave your head.) (For legal reasons this is a joke.)
My biggest pet peeve as someone who enjoys sleeping is when I unintentionally get amazing sleep whenever I stay up late. For me, most of the time I’m not an incredibly heavy sleeper. Sleeping from 10:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. might not exactly be healthy, but I enjoy it anyway because I am a very busy woman. Besides the point, something that makes me so angry is that when I fall asleep at my usual time of 10:30 p.m. and miss my alarm and wake up 10 minutes before I leave. I’ll set the scene for you, imagine it’s 6:35 in the morning, and you’re walking on the street by my home. You’re minding your own business when you see a half-asleep Terina rushing out of her door and to the bus stop. Hair’s not even fully done and it’s all frizzy and I’m sweating because I just rolled out of bed. I don’t do well under stress, if that’s not very obvious.
Okay, I don’t want this to turn into some kind of pro-alarm message because I do not endorse alarm usage. What I do endorse however, is waking up after the sun has risen. If people woke up with the sun like they do in Disney movies, society would be at its peak. You know that meme that says “The world if…”? I think that if people only had to wake up after the sun was up, that is truly what the world would be like. If you agree with me, good, if you don’t then talk to the wall because I won’t listen. This is also all exaggerated and satire because I don’t want anyone to think I will genuinely be upset with them over this. I wish all of you luck with your alarms and hopefully not sleeping through them. Happy Halloween! Or just happy whatever-day-you’re-reading-this. See you next time Hawks
