There are many questions that life at university often forces us to confront. What do I want to do after I graduate? Where can I get an outfit for my Wednesday society social? Why is Tesco meal deal inflation rising higher than my assessment grades? But the biggest mystery of all: Why do 9am lectures STILL exist?

In theory, 9am lectures and seminars seem harmless, respectable, even. They look perfectly innocent on a timetable in September when you are freshly back at uni, optimistic for how this year will go and still pretending that your healthy routine era will last longer than just two weeks. But put into practice, they’re a brutal weekly reminder that no matter how many ‘I’ll get an early night’ promises we make and attempt to keep, the universe (and our sleep schedule often has other plans). There will always be one more episode, one more housemate debrief in the living room and one more ‘quick drink’ that swiftly turns into an intense night out that you absolutely did not plan for.

For most students, the phrase ‘9am lecture’ triggers an immediate emotional reaction, I would most definitely say sitting somewhere between the fine lines of dread, wanting to drop out and the faint hope that caffeine might save the day. These scheduled early morning sessions may be a staple of academic life at university but their impact on learning, wellbeing and general student culture is… complicated. Especially if the 9am is scheduled for a Thursday morning after a night at YOLO. Afterall, wasn’t it just six hours ago you were singing your heart out to Angels and swearing that you would never drink again?

Walk into any 9am and you’ll witness the strangely universal culture that students rely on to survive these mornings. People show up hungover; others are buzzing purely from caffeine (whether from the 4 for 10 VKs last night or the coffee that they quickly rustled up before leaving the house). Some claim the same seats every week as if the lecture halls run a strict first week, now forever yours rule. Then there are the ones who just about make it on time to the lecture: wet hair, yesterday’s jumper, clutching their half-charged laptop whilst still convincing themselves that they’re ‘a morning person’.

For the rest of us, attending a 9am becomes a sort of social pact: if you go, I’ll go. It’s what I call solidarity. It’s friendship. It’s absolute delusion. Entire friendships have been held together by the mutual trauma of these mornings. You get a message on your group chat at 8:40 ‘If no one goes, we all stay home’. However, someone always inevitably folds, instantly guilt-tripping the rest of the group into dragging themselves out of their beds. I mean because nothing says bonding people quite like collectively suffering in a lecture, am I right?

Lecturers aren’t immune to this either. They stand at the front facing a barely there, let alone barely awake audience, doing their best to engage a room where at least three people are asleep and one is unapologetically eating their morning cereal out of their tupperware. You have to give them credit for even trying to appear cheerful, which frankly that in themselves should earn them a pay rise.

And then there’s the stigma. Are 9ams a character test? A sign of laziness? Or just the product of a timetable designed by someone who clearly hasn’t met a student in the last decade? With the rise of hybrid learning, some universities are rethinking their scheduling. Later start times, a more flexible range of sessions and online options could be on the cards to eventually replace the dreaded early slot altogether. Students worldwide cling on to this hope, almost as if it’s a mythical student loan forgiveness scheme.

But until then, the 9am lecture remains a rite of passage: a shared experience bonding students across years, range of degrees and campuses. It’s tiring, occasionally rewarding and permanently part of the university ritual..

A shared struggle that unites students more than any society ever could and makes us question our life choices every Thursday morning.

Words by Victoria Deviana-Wedge

Featured image courtesy of Rashid Tajuar via Unsplash. No changes have been made to this image. Image licence can be found here.