An Open Letter to My 9L Professor

By PJ Bigley | 1/28/16 6:31am

Dear 9L Professor,

No, I did not get punched yesterday. This nice purple and blue tint under my eyes isn’t a botched makeup job either. These are bags under my eyes, because I have to wake up for your class. Not once, not twice, but four times a week. And because there are these things called x-hours, and you decided to use them. All of them.

The first few weeks of the term were like a honeymoon phase. With the help of a few cups of coffee and the extra sleep I got over break, I actually felt awake. It was miraculous. "I can do this," I thought. "This is interesting," I thought. "I’m so healthy and awake and vibrant and full of life. New year, new me, right?" Wrong.

Things started to go south the day you turned the lights off to have us watch that video clip. The room was too warm and having stayed up until the wee hours of the morning doing the readings for your class, who could blame me for dozing off?

Apparently a student falling asleep in class isn’t funny, but your jokes about how tired I look are. I can make jokes, too. You are a killer of one of the greatest love affairs of our time—the love affair between me and my bed.

Yes, you have to wake up for class, too. But I assume you go to bed at an hour that most civilized human beings would find acceptable. I can almost guarantee that 80% of students are, on the other hand, so tired that they can’t even accurately pronounce the word “goodnight” anymore. At least it’s winter, though, and when I make the godforsaken trek across this frozen wasteland from the 1902 room to my dorm, the sun can’t taunt me.

And another thing (I promise I’m almost done here, but bear with me because this has to be said), your class is called a 9L. Why does it start at 8:45 a.m.? I will acknowledge that this isn’t your fault, but still, can we change that? When you’re as tired as I am, fifteen extra minutes of sleep can mean the difference between exhaustion and insanity.

If open letters have taught me anything, it’s that this is the part where I get poetic and angsty and overly emotional for no good reason. Seeing as I have no energy to do that, I will let the great Mindy Kaling ’01 speak for me: "There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it." The same logic holds for your class. There is no class (least of all yours) so interesting that I should be forced to get out of bed and drag my bones across campus that early in the morning. I had to do it in high school, I’ll have to do it if when I get a job, but for now, just let me sleep.

Let’s move Dartmouth back…to bed.

Sincerely Yours,

A very tired PJ

PJ Bigley