Before the world wakes up

Mona Shadded is a second-year PharmD candidate at the LIU Brooklyn Arnold & Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

5:00 am. A jet-black sky, birds releasing their first chirps, and a silence so deep it holds you still.

Oh, great. Not another “5:00 am Club” article. I know what you’re thinking: “We get it— you wake up early. Come back down to earth and survive with us mere mortals.” If you are, I get it. Because I was once you.

In the past, the second I heard the words “morning routine” mentioned, my sanity and I had already departed the building. Now, my morning routine makes up about 90% of my personality. And maybe—just maybe—by the end of this article, you’ll join me on this side of serenity.

Morning routines aren’t the enemy

A morning routine should not induce anxiety, fear, or pressure. But that’s exactly what you think will happen if you commit to one. Let me ask you this: What happens in your morning now?

Do you wake up and immediately rush to school or work? Sprint to the bus or train station? Frantically search for that one shirt that would look perfect with those shoes? You could have sworn it was in the left drawer. Or was it the right? Or did you never actually check out your cart? You see where I’m going with this.

You fear a morning routine will add pressure to your day. But what if it removes it? What if it’s not about doing more but about starting with stillness? Right now, your mornings feel like a half-finished jigsaw puzzle: pieces scattered, some forced into the wrong places, the bigger picture a mystery. You’re exhausted before the day has begun.

But what if, instead, your morning was the first piece you placed correctly?

5:00 am, but not for the reason you think

Let’s circle back to that 5:00 am scene. A jet-black sky. The hours before the world wakes up. The silence holds you, like the edges of a puzzle: structured, whole, waiting to be filled. It’s just you and … you.

You wake up without snoozing because, well, of course, you read the study that snoozing prolongs sleep inertia. Before your brain fully catches up, you whisper your daily affirmations.

No, you’re not cooky. You’re a student pharmacist who understands the science behind positive self-talk. You visualize yourself stepping into the day as the best version of you, and before you know it, you’re making your morning coffee, tea, or matcha. You pick up your book—on Kindle, Libby, or, on a good day, a physical copy—and sip in the silence. For half an hour, you indulge in stillness.

Then, before the inevitable chaos of student life arrives, you do something unexpected. You pull out a sudoku puzzle.

The power of puzzles

Puzzles? Stay with me. Not because of some PubMed study on their effects on cerebral development. But because you like puzzles. Because they remind you of a time before your life was dictated by deadlines. Before computers searched other computers. Before your family could afford one, so they shared sudoku puzzle books to pass the time together. Maybe that’s enough serenity.

You finish your sudoku, and it’s time. It’s time to let the day’s disarray in. Except you’re too calm to let it touch you. The chaos has nothing on you. You exhale as emails flood your inbox. You breathe in as your hourlong commute approaches. You smile at the underrated power of puzzles. The world will stir soon. The rush will return.

But maybe serenity was never about the hour on the clock. Maybe it was about choosing peace before the world wakes up.