It’s not a want, it’s not a choice – it’s a necessity. All-nighters are a right of passage for anyone who attended an educational institute. Our ability to do so is what we use to prove that we actually went to college. I like to tell myself that all good ideas come in the middle night. There’s nothing like staying up for 36 hours straight to really show you what you’re capable of. Granted, it gets harder the older you get, but no one will ever forget what it’s like to go through it.
All-nighters cause a full spectrum of emotion and sometimes you learn things about yourself that you didn’t know before – like the fact that you can drink 3 cans of red bull and really feel you have wings!
Here are 13 stages you go through when you pull an all nighter:
You plan out exactly how you’re going to work
Complete with alarms and added in breaks, you make a completely unrealistic plan to finish your work. But knowing you, you obviously don’t stick to it… I mean look at you; you left all this work till 7 hours before. You’re probably taking a ‘break’ right now.
You decide to get everything else out of the way before you start
You decide you’re hungry, then you go on Facebook, then you listen to some music, and then you call your friend, but tell them you can only talk for “10 minutes” because you’ve got lots of work.
3 Hours later… Panic mode
It’s now 2 am. This is NOT going according to the schedule. You start messaging people to make sure that they’re as behind as you are so you can feel better about yourself.
You finally start and are motivated
You have a long hard look in the mirror and decide, NO, I can’t procrastinate any longer, its time to work!
You jot down a couple of notes
You are in the zone feeling productive and efficient. You’ve got different colored pens for each section and you start to think this is possible.
You take a break
Feeling so proud of yourself for summarizing a paragraph, you decide it’s time to reward yourself. But 15 minutes ONLY.
Your break stretches to an hour
You browse online and start stumbling upon such interesting topics. It has now been an hour. With one final push of ‘self discipline’ you close your laptop and declare the end of your break.
You force yourself back to your desk
You are sitting trying to pick up where you left off, but nothing makes any sense and suddenly everything seems so hard. At this point, you feel a force making it physically impossible for you to work.
You skim through the pages
Screw summarizing, you start to pick out what you think you will need to know – aka the easiest shortest parts.
Tahyees Mode
The tipping point. Everything you read is 10 times more hilarious, there’s no way you can stop now…
Fakes Mode
It’s 8 am. Sleep is becoming more important than your work. You accept the fact that there’s no way you’re going to finish, and you’re okay with that. So what if I fail? Ill just live with my parents my whole life…
Plotting Phase
You’ve established that you’re not going to work anymore. You’re main focus now is trying to get out of it. You’ve drafted emails to your teachers, forged doctor’s notes and came up with an elaborate story of why you couldn’t finish your work. See? I told you the best ideas come in the middle of the night!
Pass-out time
You finally go to sleep and when you force yourself to wake up, you realize it was all for nothing because you don’t know anything.
WE SAID THIS: Don’t miss 15 Thoughts We Have During an Exam
