Although I had never done it before, I didn’t think accomplishing the challenge of making breakfast for a week by myself would be very difficult.

After all, I had cooked on the weekends before and even on some school mornings, but generally, my dad gets up earlier than I do to cook breakfast for my older brother, senior Michael Zhang, and me on school days.

So to cook for myself, I set my alarm to 7:15 instead of my usual 7:30 a.m., thinking 15 minutes was more than enough to make a decent breakfast.

Unfortunately, my week started out rough. On Monday, I had an English unit test in first period, and I had hoped for some last-minute vocabulary cramming time in the morning. I didn’t want to get up even earlier, so I forced myself to stay up late the night before to study, as any typical procrastinating high school student would do.

I made a Chinese egg pancake, which ended up tasting fine. It took less than 10 minutes to prepare and cook the meal, meaning I lost a precious five minutes of sleep for nothing, and I left the house around 8 a.m., the same as usual. I went through the rest of the day like any other school day (I think I even scraped a decent score on the quote identification section of my English test).

The next day, I had another test, this time in second-period AP Computer Science. However, cramming wouldn’t help much for that class, so the fact that I was making my own breakfast didn’t really affect me. I chose to simply toast a bagel and smear some cream cheese on it. Again, other than waking up 15 minutes earlier than usual, the day was an ordinary day.

On Wednesday and Thursday, I cooked for my brother as well as for myself. He only eats with me on Blue Days since he sleeps through his free first period, but Wednesday was a special occasion when he had to get up early on a Red Day. He took his eggs without even a thanks, and I doubted he actually noticed that I made them.

Friday was the day before February break, and by this point, I was too tired to care much about cooking. I threw a pancake on the stove and let the fire burn for a bit too long as I tried to force some energy into myself, resulting in one of the sides becoming significantly darker than the other. I didn’t mind, though, since the pancake ended up tasting OK.

Overall, I felt that this week wasn’t too different from any other school week. Getting up earlier didn’t turn out to be that big of a problem: 15 minutes was only slightly earlier than normal, and I didn’t get unusually tired at night. Nothing else was different about my morning routine, and my breakfasts were fine since I already knew how to cook simple foods.

Nonetheless, I suppose it was a valuable experience. Cooking is an essential life skill, but apparently, thanking your sibling for preparing your breakfast isn’t.