Yes, I was up all night working on projects and homework. No, I did not procrastinate. I truly did work as hard as I could.

School can be a crazy and stressful time as classes draw to a close and finals approach. A fair share of students will start feeling overwhelmed. While some might argue that the chaos at the end of the semester can be avoided by keeping up with work and utilizing time efficiently, the fact of the matter is that working hard is not always going to be enough to attain the sought after luxury of eight hours of sleep.

That is not to say that a lack of sleep and excessive work are necessary for success or are good at all. All-nighters themselves are most definitely not healthy and, in most cases. can be avoided altogether. It is a good idea to reach out and make a change if sleepless nights are more than a rare exception to the norm. Colleges often offer a wide variety of support services that are great to take advantage of for time-management, study skills, making studying schedules, and more.

With that being said, I believe that it is important not to assume that people who have late nights every now and then are running late because they procrastinated or have poor work habits. That is simply not always the truth. A few days ago, I worked on a model for my architecture review at 3 a.m., a project that was due later that morning, and then only slept for an hour the next night because I had two final projects to finish up. This was most definitely not because I chose to leave it all for the last minute. I did not blow off work for weekends spent partying. I didn't even spend Easter with my relatives because I knew that I had an unbelievably large amount of work to do. I worked and I worked, and even when I thought to myself that there was really no way I could get it done, I kept working.

I cannot pretend that my work ethic was flawless and that I did not take a few extra long breaks to stare into space or watch a few Facebook videos of recipes I will never try and crafts I will never attempt. I know that it was technically my fault that I did not have my work saved on Google Drive instead of Microsoft Word when my laptop crashed at midnight and I lost all of it. Flaws are inevitable and some people are simply slower than others. Whether you get the work done a week in advance or a minute before it is due, we are all just students trying to do our best and get a good grade.

If you see someone making full use of the 24-hour library, keep in mind that it is not necessarily because they procrastinated. If you are up in the middle of the night wondering why you cannot seem to study everything or finish all your work, know that you are not alone. Work your hardest and do your best. It will be over soon, and maybe then you will even have some time to squeeze a nap into the crazy hectic life that is college.