Earlier this semester my phone completely broke down and could only be revived through a hard factory reset. Because of this reset, I lost all of my apps, 4000 photos and a seemingly not-so-devastating but just as gut-wrenching, 64 pre-set alarms.
Now some people, such as anyone I’ve ever lived with, might say that this was a good thing. That no one person needs 64 separate alarms but, I’m here to tell you why this alarm surplus has been essential to me throughout the years and that setting a bunch of alarms rather than just one is the only way to do it.
I’d like to put out the disclaimer that I didn’t have all these alarms set for every day, some of them had been out of commission for years. The alarms that I do use each day are only set for the morning, and they aren’t that obnoxious, they just go off every 10 to 15 minutes. There’s absolutely no other way to wake up. I don’t know how the rest of you set one alarm and then miraculously pull yourself out of bed, but if I wake up to an alarm at nine a.m., I’m gonna need another one ten minutes later.
My alarms have much more of a purpose, however, than a contingency plan for sleeping in. Back when I had an arsenal of alarms on my phone, I rarely had to set a new one. If I made an alarm to go get my laundry at 3:48 p.m., I wouldn’t just delete it after, who knows when I’m going to need one at or around 3:48 again? It just made everything quicker.
These alarms weren’t just functional either, they were also sentimental. I’d been building up my treasure trove since maybe 2012. Before my big phone malfunction of 2019, there were still alarms in there that would play One Direction when they went off, and alarms labeled “new Glee episode in two minutes.” My alarms had been with me all throughout middle and high school and I hadn’t thought about it before they were gone, but they were a really nice way to see what was important enough to me to set an alarm for in the past.
Now my budding, second-wave collection of alarms are mostly labeled with “do not hit snooze” or “wake up right now I swear to god” but in another seven years maybe I can look back on them and see what really mattered to me in college. Or at least, for now, they’re there to wake me up.