There are two types of people in this world: coffee drinkers, and tea drinkers.
I’m Soph. Anika Seguin, and I’m addicted to coffee.
I’m Jr. Sonja Collins and I drink tea every day.
We decided to switch routines for four days to find out what it’s like on the other side.
Expectations
Anika-
I know I hate hot green tea, and I am sure this notion would not change. I drank coffee usually twice a day, once before school and once after school, so I am expecting after school that I will be really tired and just want to sleep. I have found before that when I don’t drink coffee, I get a headache, so I am expecting to be dealing with them as well. Overall, I know I will hate the next four days of my life.
Sonja-
I have had coffee before, so I knew what I was getting myself into. But, I was expecting drinking it every day to be a terrible experience. I’ve always hated coffee, and the only way I can usually drink it is if it is mostly creamer with a little coffee added. I was expecting to be really awake at least, considering coffee has three times the caffeine content of green tea. Going into the weekend, I was expecting it to be relatively painless.
Days One & Two
Anika-
I woke up on Saturday morning very tired. As I got ready to go to the gym, I remembered I needed to make myself a cup of hot green tea, which I was generally not excited about. When I found the box of tea, I opened it slowly and smelled the contents on the inside and, not to my surprise, it smelled horrible. As the tea was steeping, I changed my clothes, washed my face, and tied my shoes, all in hopes to procrastinate drinking the tea. When I came back to my cup of tea, I decided that now was the time to take my first sip. As I picked up my cow shaped mug, I slowly sipped the tea and the moment it touched my tongue, I wanted to spit it out. The cold, grass like taste was the only flavor that I was able to experience for the next few hours until I ate something else. Despite my detest for the beverage, I chugged it as fast as possible.
Day two was exceptionally better than day one. Since I had such a traumatic experience with the green tea, I decided to try a new type of tea. When walking down the aisle of Target, I wasn’t very excited to smell the aromas coming from the many boxes of tea, but I decided to buy cinnamon apple and peach tea. For that day, I took the peach tea out of the box and it actually smelled quite nice, so I wasn’t too upset about making my tea that morning. I decided to drink my tea while it was hot today, which definitely made it taste much better. With the combination of the peach flavor overwhelming the leafy-grass like taste and the steam coming off of the tea, I actually enjoyed drinking it. Although it did not make me feel more awake, it still satisfied my need for a warm beverage.
Sonja-
On the first day of the swap, I made the cup of dunkin donuts coffee. Somehow, I avoided drinking it until the afternoon, I walked into the kitchen at one p.m. and the mug still sat there completely full. By that time it was cold, which probably did not help the taste. Cold tea is fine, but cold coffee, on the other hand, tasted like dirt, sad, cold dirt. In my opinion, the cold coffee was easily ten times worse than the tea I usually drink.
It also takes so much more time and effort to make it. It takes ten minutes, two spoons, a cup, and an entire machine to create one pot of coffee while tea only requires a microwave and a cup. Coffee just seems like so much effort for disappointing results while tea is simple and tastes better as well.
Day two wasn’t better than the first. Thankfully, the coffee was still warm when I drank it this time, but it only slightly improved the taste from the day before. I decided the best way to get through it was to drink the whole cup as fast as possible. This kind of defeats the whole purpose of drinking something warm like tea or coffee in the morning, but at least it was better than suffering through the taste.
Days Three & Four
Anika-
On day three, I decided to try out the cinnamon apple tea, which I was also a little excited about. The tea smelled half of leaves and half of cinnamon, which ruined a bit of my excitement, but I was still hopeful that it couldn’t be worse than the green tea. When I made the tea, I was a little preoccupied with my dog, so the tea got a little cold, which didn’t help the flavor.
Although the cinnamon was an overpowering flavor, which is good, the flavor of the leaves still came through strong and ruined my overall experience. Along with the poor flavor, this tea had no caffeine in it, which made me feel horrible and not awake at all.
On the last day of our test, I decided to switch back to green tea since I had relatively good experiences with the last two types of teas that I had tried. While making my tea this day, I decided to put sweetener in it to try and make the leafy taste less horrible, which did not work. It almost seemed that the sugar intensified the grassy taste and made my experience with green tea even worse.
Sonja-
On the third morning, I made espresso instead of usual black coffee, I did this using the coffee machine my family has that allows you to make different types of coffee. I thought it would be better and not as much to drink. The espresso was definitely not better, just stronger, but at least I did not have to sit around with a cup full of cold coffee all morning. It was over faster, but the coffee still tasted bad. That was no surprise.
Also, I had noticed for the last couple days that the extra caffeine was not making me more awake, it was just making my hands shaky instead. That really ruined the coffee experience for me, considering the extra caffeine was all I was looking forward to.
On the final day of our test, I was sitting on the couch watching tv and drinking my coffee and I realized the only good thing about coffee. The smell. It’s better than anything else about the drink. It reminds me of being around family because most of them drink coffee every day. I wish I could just keep a cup of hot coffee with me for that reason alone, but having to drink it turns the whole experience around.
Other than the comforting smell, drinking coffee is a very bad experience. I would not suggest the drink to anyone.
Why we won’t switch
Anika-
When I wake up in the morning, I’m not usually happy or excited to be up early, and coffee helps me feel a little bit better about waking up. Tea just didn’t do the trick for me. Although the warmth was nice, the heat quickly left my beverage and the taste of leaves was back and ruined the comforting taste that I can always find in coffee.
Sonja-
I won’t be switching to drinking coffee in the morning because it makes me feel shaky and doesn’t even taste good. While I did enjoy the smell of the beverage, that is not enough to make it worth it for me. I would also never recommend drinking coffee every day to anyone because it takes up so much time and effort to make. Tea is a much better experience and tastes better overall.
