Most people in this science class follow a routine before having a morning class. Part of that routine is deciding whether to shower the night before class, the morning of, or not at all. Based off of my experience, I have learned that showering the morning of is the most efficient way to do it. Sophomore year of high school was when I realized this.
After freshman year, I was tired of waking up early to take a shower so I started taking them the night before school. What I noticed after that was a slip in my grades. I would be sitting in biology class (one of the hardest classes I had in high school) and wouldn’t pay attention at all, which was kind of new for me. I would sit in my seat in the back of the class with bags under my eyes daydreaming about anything that wasn’t biology.
I would usually daydream about playing either basketball or football. Either way, I would walk out of that class having learned barely anything at all. That was a class where people would specifically say, “If you don’t follow what she’s saying, you’re screwed.” We would do fill-in-the-blanks on outlines and I would just listen for the blanks. The day before the tests, I would have to go over all of those outlines, but I never did as well as I would have if I knew what I was studying. This applied to every other class that I had that year, too. Junior year, when I showered the morning of and noticed that I wasn’t daydreaming about crossing people over but was paying attention, I decided to make that my routine and haven’t regretted it since.
Scientific studies say that you’re supposed to take cold showers in the morning for energy, but no one wants to do that and hot showers have worked well for me (Dumontet). Other scientific evidence shows that most people do their best work in the late morning after their body temperature, working memory, concentration, and alertness have gradually improved (Shellenbarger). “Taking a warm shower can jump-start the process” (Shellenbarger).
Of course, this does not apply to everyone. Some people are able to get up and have enough energy to not want to fall asleep or daydream in class. Also, waking up earlier to take a shower means you lose sleep, but in my opinion, it’s worth it.
That’s really interesting! I do think that showers kind of wake me up, but I would have never connected it to paying attention in class. Another possible factor of doing worse in school after showering the night before could be that you might stay up later when you shower at night, therefore making you more tired in the morning.