Timing is Everything

I believe the assumption that mostly everyones day in today's world begins with the recognizable, unique, one of a kind sound of their alarm clock. Alarm clocks have been dated back to the early 15th century. Of course the clocks back in Christopher Columbus's day was not the alarm clocks we know today.

As the centuries passed, the features of the alarm clock were enhanced. General Electric-Telechron has contributed to one of the best and worst features of the alarm clock. The snooze button. For the person who did not get the recommended amount of sleep the night before, pressing the simple snooze button has become a best friend. Instead of waking up when the alarm was set to go off, the snooze button allows the tired individual to sleep or 'snooze' for another 5 or 10 minutes. These 5 to 10 minute snoozes can feel like an eternity, until the snooze alarm goes off after 5 or 10 minutes and then the feeling that you just slept for 50 years goes away and turns into the 'that was too quick to be 5 minutes' feeling.

The ability to sleep for an extra 5 to 10 minutes also comes with its negative side. This negative side is one that I had an experience with this morning. The story goes as follows. Class is at eight in the morning and the alarm is set to sound its lovely tune at six. The beautiful melodies of the alarm begin to sound at the expected time, six. And then the life changing decision comes up, 'snooze' or 'alarm off.' There is no combination of words that can describe how much thought goes into this decision. This early morning as the sun was making its climb to the top of the sky from behind the mountains, the option of 'snooze' was selected. To make a long story short, the 'snooze' was not a five minute snooze. This snooze somehow took on some metamorphic characteristics and morphed into a 3 hour long nap. As the snooze was turning into a nap, the eight o'clock class was being missed and was eventually completely missed.

If sleeping in and accidentally skipping an important class isn't bad enough, the following coincidence will be the icing on the cake. While slowly realizing that the eight o'clock was missed, the next objective became the important issue. Be to time for the ten o'clock class. Waking up 30 minutes before the ten o'clock class can somehow make you get dressed and everything packed in a simple 5 or so minutes. It is amazing how stress can make you accomplish some things incredibly fast. While venturing on the wonderful campus of BYU to my ten o'clock class, I see a figure walking down a hill towards my direction. The outline of the person seems familiar. As the person gets closer and closer, it hits me that this person is someone who holds some keys on whether or not I pass a class. That is correct, the familiar person turns out to be the eight o'clock teacher. Somehow out of a possibility of 35,000 people the teacher and student meet. Instant stupidity hits me. What are the chances of this ever happening? The odds for getting a hole in one is 5000 to 1, the odds for dating a millionaire is 215 to 1, the odds of writing a New York Times best seller is 220 to 1. I had a better chance of getting a hole in one, dating a girl who is a millionaire, and a better odd of writing a New York Times best seller over running into my teacher of the class that I accidentally (I cannot stress that enough) slept through.

As the circle turns, it comes back to the choices you make. Everyone says go to bed early and get a good nights rest. Now of course no one in college follows that. From now on I will be considering that rule of rest. As for now, I am going to go to the golf course and try to get a hole in one. The odds seem to be in my favor today for some reason.