Beep. Beep. Beep.
It's the alarm going off for the third time.
He drags himself out of bed, throws on a Redhawks T-shirt and hurries out the door of Vandiver Hall to start the trek across campus to his lecture class in Dempster Hall.
He's met by his 70-plus classmates and finds the last empty seat in the back of the classroom. He knows just a handful of people in the room.
After class, he meets his friends at the University Center for lunch. Chick-fil-A never seems to disappoint.
The rest of the day will consist of studying, club meetings, working off that Chick-fil-A at the Recreation Center - North and somehow managing to maintain the slightest glimpse of a social life.
For some, this chaos is a typical example of life as a Southeast Missouri State University student today.
Keyword: today.
It's hard for current students to imagine Southeast's campus before Dempster Hall, Vandiver Hall, the University Center, the Redhawks mascot and the other signature aspects of campus that are associated with Southeast today. But for the long line of alumni in Southeast junior Jason Cox's family, the early times of Southeast without all of these modern aspects of the university are ones his family cherishes most.
Cox is in his first semester of studying biology at Southeast after transferring from the University of Missouri. It wasn't hard to decide where he would end up next after leaving Mizzou because of the large class sizes and distance from home. Southeast met all of Cox's requirements.
But if he did happen to have any concerns, he could always ask his parents, uncles, grandparents and other relatives about their experience at Southeast. All of them are alumni of the university.
Although much of the college experience at Southeast stays the same -- the dread of waking up for an 8 a.m. class or keeping up with a busy college schedule -- there is no denying the growth and how the look of the university has changed from the time Cox's grandpa taught at Southeast in the '60s.
Cox's grandmother, Betty Cox, looks back at the times spent at Southeast years ago while her husband Robert L. Cox Sr. taught at the university. He was hired to teach and set up a print shop for the university in 1964.
"When he was first hired by SEMO, he was hired to develop a print shop or to plan and buy and whatever you do to set up a print shop for the university and develop a printing program for the students," Betty Cox said of her late husband. "He used to teach journalism majors."
The print shop was located in Academic Hall and printed any materials the university needed such as pamphlets, brochures, commencement booklets, photographs and more. With such a heavy workload of items to print, Betty Cox often found herself staying late in the print shop with her husband to make sure a job was finished by its deadline.
"We were there a lot," Betty Cox said. "For example, early on in his career, he used to print the commencement programs with all the graduates in it, and they wouldn't get us the names of the graduates until like the night before or the morning of so he'd probably be there most of the night printing the commencement program, and I'd be there helping him."
Even though Betty Cox didn't work at or attend Southeast, she still knew all of the faculty members and their spouses by being a member of what she called "faculty dames."
"Back in the day, there were mainly male faculty, so the wives got together once a month for fellowship and to be acquainted and so forth," Betty Cox said.
The days of knowing all of the faculty members at Southeast have long passed for her and the faculty dames.
"Probably the greatest change has been the growth," Betty Cox said. "Because for years, we knew every faculty member by their name and the spouse and then it has grown so large that now we don't."
As of this fall, Southeast had enrolled 11,917 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled and during the 2012-2013 school year employed 1,274 faculty and staff members, which makes it nearly impossible to know everyone at Southeast.
While the size of campus has grown, some traditions haven't changed for Betty Cox over the years. She and her husband used to buy season tickets for Southeast's football and basketball games and, although her husband retired in 1991 and died in 2007, she continues to buy them today and support Southeast's athletics department. She also occasionally attends performances at the River Campus.
But she's not always going to these events alone.
Her son and Jason Cox's father, Robert L. Cox Jr., attends some of the games with his mother to see his alma mater.
Cox Jr. graduated from Southeast in 1983 with a degree in accounting. It wasn't hard for him to decide what university to attend after spending so many years on the campus prior to his freshman year at Southeast.
Not only was Southeast close to home and affordable, it was where he spent so much time helping his father in the print shop and where he went to elementary school and high school.
He explained that Scully's second floor used to be an elementary school, and the first floor was a high school, so that's where he went to school since his father was teaching at Southeast.
"It was a huge part of my life," Cox Jr. said. "I spent the first 21 years of my life on the campus. SEMO was always there every day."
Cox Jr. is still getting used to some of the changes that have occurred at Southeast since his time here.
"I'm just getting over that we're the Redhawks," he said.
During his time at the university, Southeast's mascot was the Indians. The mascot changed to the Redhawk in the spring 2005 semester.
Other changes also have taken some getting used to for this alumnus. Cox Jr. explained how the business classes used to be in Academic Hall, the University Center wasn't built until he was in high school and the River Campus wasn't even being talked about.
Cox Jr. is one of three children in his family to attend Southeast. His younger and older brother both graduated from the university.
His younger brother, Scott Cox, graduated with a communications degree and now works as a radio personality for a station in Columbia, Mo., called Clear 99 on 99.3 FM. The older brother, Charles Cox, graduated with a music degree but died after battling cancer and now has a scholarship in his name for Southeast students pursuing a music degree called the Charles W. Cox Music Scholarship.
Jason Cox's mother, Janie Cox, also graduated from Southeast with a degree in elementary education and taught second grade for 30 years. Janie Cox's father and two of her brothers also graduated from Southeast, and her mother and another brother also attended the university.
Jason and Betty Cox both agreed that having so much of the family attend Southeast gives them a unique bond.
"Now it's more of a nostalgic type of thing," Cox Jr. said. "It'll always be special. It's not a big part of my life now, but it is a big part of my past."
Southeast continues to change and grow to this day with the addition of the New Hall this fall, the unveiling of Academic Hall's renovations during homecoming and the beginning of construction of a residence hall at the River Campus.
It may be hard to believe that Southeast could change any more than it already has over the years as Betty and Robert L. Cox, Jr. described, but then again, these alumni never would have pictured Southeast how it is today.
So it makes one have to wonder, how will the memories of the Southeast of today match up with the Southeast of tomorrow?
With alumni expected to visit this homecoming weekend, it will be a reminder of just how much the university has progressed over the years. There is sure to be reminiscing of the memories made, stories of the times spent in the buildings that have remained over the years and plenty of talk about the small details that remind each alum of Southeast.But one thing is for sure: each new year of graduates will remember Southeast a little differently than the ones that came before them.
