"Oh no!" I declared in despair after I awakened

I narrowly avoided a calamity this morning. On all mornings when I have to attend college, I have several alarms set on both of my phones so that if I sleep through one, there are several more that will ring. Well, today I somehow slept through between five and ten alarms. It was only when my grandmother called me that I awoke.

Once I was awake, I realised it was 10:50...forty minutes before the start of my first lesson. There was no time for me to eat breakfast, drink coffee and shower; instead, I donned my day clothing (over my pajamas), college bag and badges, and then bolted down at Peregrine falcon velocity to my bus stop a mile away. Unsurprisingly, I was shattered once I reached my stop, even though the run was downhill.

I caught the 11:12 bus, which gave me eighteen minutes to arrive at college. To my pleasant surprise, my bus made few stops, faced a mostly traffic-free route and the lights were friendly. The only part of the trip where I was delayed was after my bus drove past Nottingham's train station, where something in progress near the Broadmarsh caused a traffic jam, delaying my arrival at college by five more minutes.

When I made it to class at 11:35, I was not handed a late slip because (1) I messaged ahead to my friends to inform my teacher that I was delayed but on my way, (2) because the lesson hadn't quite started, so I was lucky, and (3) because I was within the "minutes after the start" limit for every class. Even so, I felt terrible that I had grossly overslept and was slightly late; during my first college course I was never late and even for this course I've, other than on this occasion, either been early or exactly on time. Being late, even just this once, is embarrassing and I apologised to my teacher, who was understanding, appreciated my messaging ahead and told me not to worry.

To prevent this from happening again, I will change the alarm sound on one of my phones and put the device closer to my bed. Promising to not sleep deeply again isn't a promise I can keep, so the best I can do is improve my existing alarm system. I am fortunate that this happened on a day when my first class is in the late morning - I would have missed a lesson had this occurred on an early start day and since I want to achieve 100% for the second year in a row, something like this must not happen again. I can laugh about this morning and learn from it as well.