ALEX BARTLOW | ASSISTANT OPINION EDITOR 

I woke up yesterday morning to the sound of construction. When 5 a.m. rolls around, you don’t expect to hear the beeping of concrete trucks and forklifts in a seemingly endless battle of “who can back up the longest.” I guess that is what you get for choosing to live 20 feet from the new residence hall construction site.

I was angry, of course, because I am not a morning person. In fact, if I get less than six hours of sleep, my mind can barely remember to put on pants, let alone sit through four-and-a-half hours of accounting, economics and ethics.

Nevertheless, whenever my schoolwork, two on-campus jobs, extracurricular activities and internship searches don’t allow me to reach my six hours of precious shuteye, I can always turn to black magic itself–my friend, coffee.

I grew up in a family of coffee drinkers. In fact, even when I was 7 years old, my grandparents would fix me a cup halfway filled with coffee, half milk and a few teaspoons of sugar–bitter wasn’t really my thing as a kid. That taught me a very important lesson: coffee is a necessity.

Sure, Starbucks can create some amazing combinations that get the college girls sprinting to and tackling each other in the line. But for me, there is nothing better than a cup of black joe.

It’s not all about the caffeine, that’s just a nice addition for an overwhelmed college student. To me it’s all about what coffee stands for: perseverance.

Maybe the appeal of coffee is all in my head, but for some reason, a cup in the morning or early afternoon not only wakes me up, but inspires me to continue working. When talking to successful men and women in the Indianapolis community, I often find that they start their mornings in the exact same way, with a newspaper and cup of coffee.

I see the lines at Starbucks: men with suits and ties and women with pencil skirts and heels. Much more than completing their “yuppie” appearance and taking part in American consumerism, they are there to gain the extra bit of motivation needed to create a better life for themselves and their families.

As a student in Indianapolis, I regularly find myself envisioning and striving for a successful future, and if coffee helps me get there, fill up my cup.

The aroma, the taste, the appearance: It all blends (no pun intended) into a concoction that inspires me to grind (pun intended) through the extraordinarily ordinary troubles of my life.

As I sit here at 1 a.m., writing this very article, I cannot help but think of Alexander King’s simple, yet powerful insight. “This seems to be the basic need of the human heart in nearly every great crisis — a good hot cup of coffee.”