Consider this your step by step guide to Emma's morning:

    6:00am - My first alarm goes off. This is more of a little warning. I open my eyes and check my phone. My friends send me text messages and snapchats (sometimes so many that my phone crashes!) while I'm sleeping and I do the same to them. It's an easy way we've found to keep each other updated. So I check my notifications and answer them. Depending on how tired I am, I either drift back to sleep or stay awake and text friends and family until they go to bed. 

 

    6:50am- Alarm number 2 goes off. I roll out of bed and head down the hall to brush my teeth and wash my face. I look in the mirror and access the state of my under eye bags. Usual in critical condition.

 

    7:00am- I sit on my dorm room floor and do my hair and makeup. Sometimes I'm listening to music, sometimes talking and joking around with my roommates and sometimes one of my friends will be awake and free to FaceTime. 

 

    7:20am- I get dressed (which requires choosing one of the 20 leotards I have here with me. That's serious downsizing since I have about 30 still in Texas. Oops.) and fill up my water bottle, take vitamins, grab a drinkable yogurt...etc. etc. I get ready pretty quickly so most mornings I spend a lot of time communicating with people at home. Since my friends in the USA are in school when I'm going to bed, it's usually the only chance I get to talk to them.

 

    7:55am- Morgan (roommate) starts tapping her foot by the door ready to go down to breakfast. If you're late, it's easy to get caught at the end of a very long line of students waiting for breakfast and that is just a HUGE waste of time. I usually don't eat the Kasha because this semester they're serving mainly my least two favorites. So it's just bread and butter to accompany my yogurt for me! Lately I've just been staying in my room and skipping the dining room completely.

 

    8:10am- We go up to the 2nd floor where all the studios are and wait in the hallways and stretch before our 9 o clock class. I used to have a routine that I went through before classes but now, in the mornings my brains are going in about 100 different directions. With all the different conversations I carry on earlier in the morning and with anticipation for the upcoming day, I find it easiest to stretch for about 10 to 15 minutes then I just sit. My classmates laugh at me but I really just sit and put my earbuds in and focus. Often, my music is turned up so loud that they have to throw something at me to get my attention!

 

    9:00am- Class starts! When my teacher walks in the room we're already doing the set warmup exercises that she likes for us to start without her so that we don't waste time. Within 10 seconds of her entering the room she's already yelling at me. It's strict and it's hard, but I wouldn't be here if I didn't like it.

Actual photo of what I do before class taken by a classmate.