When you think of a college student, I hope you think of someone studious, but also very busy! I am both of these qualities to the extreme. I will not go to bed until my school work is done or I am satisfied with the progress I made. This led me to my first college all-nighter!
Somehow, I made it through the majority of my first year before this happened, but it was such a rough experience I will not be doing it again. Maybe I will be coming close to it, but even that is a push! Now, what did I do all day and night to stay busy? What led to so much work to do in just one night?
All week I had chapter readings to complete, notes to take, and lectures to attend. Sounds like a pretty typical college student to me, but I was also playing catch up in my courses at this time since I was just coming back to class from being sick. A note for being sick or missing lectures in college: you have to work twice as hard as you think to get back on track!
I had a lot on my plate with this, discussion boards, and essays, so I kept pushing back starting my lab report for Foundations of Biology further and further away. We also had a group project due a few days prior, so I worked on that before my own report because I did not want to let my group down! Needless to say, I was being productive, but I had a lot of work to do.
Once my classes settled down in the day, I started to refresh my memory for the materials I was supposed to be writing about in my lab report, and this is when I realized I had only half the idea of what I was supposed to talk about in this major report I had due at 8am the next morning.
So I did what any logical college student would do. I typed up what I was confident in, then went to get some food and coffee :)
At this point, I had no idea I was going to be pulling an all nighter, but shortly after dinner when I was trying to teach myself the material I needed to elaborate on in my report to analyze my data, it became apparent that it was going to be a long night.
I rewatched lectures and read my textbook for hours. I was using Google to look up things that didn’t ring a bell left and right. I didn’t even know what type of diagrams I was looking at at one point. This part just took persistence. I knew I was behind and needed to learn a lot of material quickly, so that’s what I did. After I felt like I knew the concepts decently, I resumed writing my report and decided that I would look up anything I ran into an issue with.
Around midnight, I needed a break. I went to Clinton Street Market in Burge Residence Hall right before they closed. If you are unfamiliar with campus, this can easily be where all of your laundry money goes. It is a great place to go get something quick to eat or snack on when you don’t have time to go to the dining hall or the dining hall is not open. I grabbed some sweet snacks and of course more coffee before heading back to work on my report.
Fast forward six hours of intense typing, researching, and editing, I came to the conclusion of my report. I was struggling to focus, stay awake, and muster the motivation to finish. But, I started to jump around a bit to wake myself up, and for the next hour, I edited my report.
Here is the funny part. People were starting to wake up now that it was getting to 7am. My resident assistant, who was also the RA on duty the night before, walked by the lounge I was in on his way to the bathroom when he woke up. He stopped by to peek in and see why the lights were on so early. When he saw me, he realized that I pulled an all-nighter and we laughed about it!
This gave me the energy I needed to finish editing my report. And after just reading through it one time, I submitted it! However, I was not done there. I still had a whole new day to get through. I freshened up and was out the door to classes again.
This experience was rough and made me truly value the (little) sleep I get! Before I came to college, I thought students pulled all-nighters left and right, but most people do not at all. It is good to set boundaries for when to sleep, and I just learned that the hard way.