First of all, I’d like to say hello to all of the Wednesday readers who are picking up this paper, flipping to the Forum section and going, “What the hell?” As you can see, my column is running today instead of Tuesday. Maybe you don’t read the Tuesday paper. Maybe this is your first time reading my column. I welcome you.

Secondly, I’d like to apologize to all of my avid Tuesday readers who, no doubt, awoke late Tuesday morning to what they thought would be a relaxing day off, only to realize there would be no Daily Kent Stater that day, my column would not be there and their world was about to crumble. I’m back. Fear not. Dry your eyes. Read on.

When I woke up Monday morning and looked at my alarm clock I wanted to cry. It was 9:06 a.m., and my first class started in just eight minutes. I remembered seeing that it was 7:07 a.m., turning over and continuing to spoon with my dog. I had time. But now, seemingly two minutes later, I was late. I wouldn’t make it on time, not even if I jet-packed to class. There was too much to do, and I had to immediately begin making sacrifices from my morning routine.

I won’t get into any graphic detail here, but there were probably a few necessary hygienic practices I had to skip that morning. This includes, but is not limited to, showering and the application of deodorant. I’ll leave it at that. But needless to say, a bad morning usually makes for a bad day in general.

And this isn’t the first time I’ve slept through my alarm. If I stay up past 3 a.m. and if I’ve had coffee past 11 p.m. the night before, I usually don’t hear my phone go off. My dog is as much at fault here. At the beginning of the year, Dublin was pretty good about bolting out of bed with the first alarm, demanding to be fed and watered and taken outside. I quickly trained him to disregard the first 10 alarms, as they are preparatory tones intended for snooze purposes. But he apparently missed something in our training and has instead decided that all tones are suggestions and that we don’t really have to ever wake up. Dublin doesn’t bother to tell me when I’ve slept in anymore. So I can’t be 100 percent responsible.

That’s why I’m proposing that the university, and maybe the world in general, start offering a wake-up call service. Hotels do it and my mom did it for me all through high school, so why did it suddenly stop? It shouldn’t have. If there were ever a time in my life when I needed a wake-up call, it’s college. I’ve had my sister, my friend and my mother call me on various important days to ensure that I wake up, but I can’t rely on them all the time.

Plus there are tons of kids on this campus who need jobs. Why not have them man phones all day? We could offer an automated service, sure, but I really like the personal touch and hearing someone’s voice on the other end of the line. We could even personalize those greetings. You could have the gentle version or the rude version.

“Rise and shine, darling,” or, “IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN, YOU LAZY &*@#$%!”

And since tutoring, etc. is free, this would be, too. It would be a resource like any resource on this campus that we should offer and encourage to help students do well.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a nap to take, multiple alarms to set and a whole list of hygienic practices to skip tomorrow morning. Have a great day.

Kristine Gill is a junior newspaper journalism major and columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact her at [email protected].