“Good Morning!”: A Rant in Favour of 8 a.m. Classes

In the beginning, 1As all thought the course registration process would be an opportunity to leave behind those imposed and oppressive high school timetable structures. An opportunity to, at last, be free.

Sciences Po reacted promptly by sending a spreadsheet that only the most brilliant Citibank analysts and Summa Cum Laude students could fully understand. Surely this is what the admissions process was all about: testing first-years’ ability to avoid scheduling conflicts between alternating cells, rows, and columns across three different pages of information.

The goal of this article is to replace confusion with curiosity. Here’s a question for you: how many hours are the Reims campus buildings actually in use?

Let’s assume France is having a good day – no strikes, no blockages, and no bad weather. Reasonable situation, right? Right?

On such an uneventful day, campus is expected to open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday–Friday as a bare minimum, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays. But we must remember that classes take place over a 12-week period, as well as during integration week and finals. Assuming a 14-week long semester, during which all classrooms will be occupied for the whole day, means that the venue will be in use a whopping 45% of the time.

Of course, no one would ever ask the administration to open the campus buildings 24/7, but the university still has to pay to keep them running even when closed. This can easily require spending several millions of euros of tuition fees and government subsidies on an inactive building complex.

But hey, you wouldn’t disconnect the CROUS fridges at night, would you?

So until the day comes when keeping the campus running may justify opening those big red doors at the most convenient time for students, the Sciences Po admin must have concluded that the opening hours which will make the fewest people unhappy, are the current ones.

Will students ever become used to waking up at a really unsociable hour only to attend a class that they are physically unprepared for? Imagine having a language class, where you are expected to actively contribute in a language you’re definitely not ready to use properly, let alone at that time in the morning.

And that is exactly what 8 a.m. classes are here for. They are by no means convenient, well-planned, or comfortable. In fact, they’re the exact opposite. These kinds of classes teach us that life is not always easy, and that achieving success requires some effort. Even teachers would prefer to have more time for themselves – more than what they already enjoy relative to students – but using resources efficiently requires tradeoffs at times.

8 a.m. classes also give students a taste of resilience. This refers to the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences.^[1] Attending class at such an unreasonable time can encourage our mind to learn how to solve problems even when we are just starting our day. It all comes down to what kind of mentality we have – don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I enjoy waking up early, either.

Of course, this does not necessarily mean we have to face every single lesson with the mindset of the strongest, most capable people around – although, we kind of already are those people –, but rather that every annoying situation is a test on the way we see the world. From the moment we wake up, it is up to us to decide whether to smile at the day ahead or to snooze our alarm, trying to deny the fact that our sleep is over.

So next time you find yourself being awoken by the earliest of alarms, consider asking your teacher for a slightly longer break mid-session, going to the cafeteria, and getting yourself a chocolatine. Don’t forget to breathe heavily, smile, and carry on. You’ll soon realise that it doesn’t take too long to create a habit, and when you add CROUS prices to the mix… it’s a game changer.

Have a great morning!