I disappeared again, you guys. Fell off the face of the earth. I am sorry if I am causing you to develop a complex or commitment issues, I will help pay for your therapy. Okay, I won’t but it’s the thought that counts. I have no excuse except for I am dying. School is killing me. I am dramatic and I am also dying. I have not seen sunshine or the outside of my school library in weeks. My starbucks cup has started to infuse itself to my hand. The dexterity of my thumbs has decreased substantially because I have not worn pants that require buttoning in 2 months. I have not blogged in months because I am dramatic, negative and over-emotional. No one wants to read that but I am going to make you anyway. This week I got about 3.345 hours of sleep. Not a night. All week. My first, complete all-nighter in years. All-nighters take practice, commitment and a certain level of insanity. They are not for the faint of heart or the flaky. Being a desperate, sleep deprived zombie clutching your coffee mug at 3 am crying over your laptop, desperately trying to engrave the basics of psychology into your memory is a level only few achieve. I know you are sitting at your computer thinking, “I want to be you. Tell me your secrets.” You did not have to say it, I already knew. I know you are desperate for a guide on how you too can dangerously toe the line between stressed college student and certifiably insane. I will indulge you and give you an hour by hour guide of how to pull an all-nighter. Buckle up- it will be a wild ride.
6 p.m. Look over your butt ton of work and cry a little bit. Put your head down. Close your eyes just to make sure you are not dreaming. You are not dreaming. It is this sucky. Look again through teary eyes as you talk yourself into the inevitable. Accept your fate. You will not be going to sleep tonight. Convince yourself it will be fun. Invite friends to join in the awful, horrible, depressing misery fun. Google search all-nighters so you feel less alone in your desperate attempt to make up for poor time management or your inability to say no to new commitments, leaving you with no other option than to actually completely give up sleep.
(Look, all-nighters are basically exercise!)
8 p.m. The festivities begin. Start by taking a selfie. It will come in handy for when you lose your mind in the middle of the night and run away without any notice so your loved ones have a record of what you were wearing to give law enforcement. I mean for memories, it's good for the memories.
9 p.m. Work diligently. Set an alarm for every half an hour so you can your friends can complain about how awful everything is without interrupting each other. At this point you are humorously aware of the long night ahead of you. It is time to find a funny picture from the internet so you can complain about staying up all night, but in a back-handed humorous way. If you are using humor you are not breaking the bible verse "Do everything without complaining or grumbling" Everyone knows that.
10 P.M & 11 P.M. These are uneventful hours. Continue to work. At the turn of the hour your productivity will take a hit worse than the fathers on America's Funniest Home Videos playing baseball with small children. Once midnight rolls around, like a baseball to the crotch, your ability to achieve anything will be depleted. Ride this wave of motivation while it lasts. But make sure you frequently update your twitter so the world knows that you are still in fact, pulling an all nighter. Bonus points if you come up with a creative hash tag. Towards the end of this time you actually begin to lose your mind a little bit. Make sure you capture it on camera.
12 A.M. This is quite possibly the saddest moment. The clock strikes midnight, the date on the iPhone screen you shouldn't be looking at changes. Suddenly it's tomorrow. You have not completed a single thing despite actually working. You sip shamefully drink buckets of coffee and look over your tear stained agenda book. This is the moment you truly accept that sleep will not come tonight. It's okay to cry. We all understand.
1 a.m. and 2 a.m. These are the more desperate, mentally instable sisters to 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. You are working diligently but diligently has a new definition at 2 o'clock in the morning. If your text book is at least open or you are not on facebook, you qualify as diligently working. This is the point in which the first pot of coffee has worn off so you impatiently wait as the coffee brews. You realize for the first time how unreasonably loud your coffee maker is. It sounds like a person trying to slurp soup with just their face. You are trying not to wake the lucky souls who are asleep around you and fighting off the urge to strangle them out of jealously. It is a confusing paradox. You've developed a bit of a twitch and wonder if it will be permanent.
3 a.m. You convince yourself you have completed enough work to go on a sheetz run (if you do not know what Sheetz is; it is the embassy for heaven here on earth. The cashiers are angels and you hear the celestial choirs sing as you enter. It is also a questionable gas station that is open 24 hrs. It just depends on the angle you are standing at.) The real reason you leave the house is because you cannot be quiet anymore, you scream at the top of your lungs and risk being arrested for disturbing the peace. You get to sheetz and sink into a pit of despair as you cry over your mac & cheese bites. This is the moment you knew would come. Collapse on the floor of sheetz and tell your friends to go on without you.
4 a.m. You have one more burst of energy and manage to complete what you set out to complete. At this point it is too late to go to sleep so you begin working on the next assignment. This is also the hour where all heck breaks loose. You begin to roll around on the floor and your friends consider calling for help.
5 a.m You refresh the coffee one more time and stare into the black, meaningless void of your computer screen that has entered sleep mode because you have not done actual work in that long. All of you have lost it completely. You switch back and forth from giggling to crying. You do not know what life is anymore. Hang in there, you have almost made it.
6 a.m. The morning has arrived. People begin stirring around you. You realize that you will not wake up this morning. You wonder if that means you are dead. Your mental health has taken a plummet off of mount Everest. You are absolutely sure that everything in life is meaningless. You regret you decision and begin to cry. Again.
7 a.m. You pull yourself together and try to get ready for the day. You begin dropping like flies. Some of us just can't hang.
8 a.m. Put on your cutest outfit. Go to class and pretend you have it all together. You pulled an all-nighter AND look cute. Rock it. Ride this out while you can because the crazy train is hurling towards you at lightening speed. By noon you will have reached an all time high of mental instability.
The rest of the day is a distant blur. Most will assume you are drunk and you will wish you were. Do not expect to be productive and try not to drive a car. As time separates you from this night you will convince yourself it was not so bad. I suggest wasting more time by creating an hour by hour recap of the experience to review next time you consider an all-nighter.
xoxo hope this helps!
