Every day, I ask my students an ice-breaker question to settle them in for the class. It’s really a memory technique to remind me to do my attendance, but it also provides the extra bonus of making contact with each student, every day.

It’s actually disheartening to know that some students go through their entire day without anybody speaking with them or even saying their name.

One of my favourites is to ask whether they would rather take nothing but cold showers or perpetually always get one less hour of sleep than they need.

It’s really a question of comfort over health and as I enter the middle years of my life, the comforts I’ve worked towards don’t mean anything without my health. It’s a lesson I really wish I could’ve learned at their age, but future forecasting is almost impossible for the majority of humanity—let alone impulsive teenagers.

Given the choice, which is actually one we are presented with almost every day, the choice is simple:

I’ll take the cold showers.