The one event that ties all college students together, from freshmen to super seniors, is the all-nighter. Procrastination hits everyone hard, and pretty soon, not doing a homework assignment by the deadline will soon turn into you have three papers due and a test tomorrow and you haven't worked on anything.
This is when champions are made: the few that brave the late night hours and decide to saddle up and accept the situation that they have put themselves in. Before you know it, you're brewing coffee or grabbing energy drinks and headed to your designated studying sweet spot.
7p.m.-9p.m.: You start off strong and are doing work faster than you thought humanly possible. Your fingers are flying across the keys and you start to be hopeful that you were over-thinking it and you might not have to be here all night after all. Still, you carry on drinking coffee, riding the caffeine buzz and trying to get your work done as fast as you can.
9:30p.m.-10p.m.: You finish your first paper and are still going strong. Some friends show up who also need to get work done. They walk in and your focus walks out. You start talking about absolutely everything besides what you are actually supposed to be doing. You look down and realize you've gotten nothing done.
10p.m.-12a.m.: Another pot of coffee and another paper down. You feel yourself getting tired. Your friends have come and gone, because they did their work the way it was intended to be done, and you start to doubt yourself and if you will actually get your work done in time. The hours seem to be slipping away and you are stalled out on your last paper, trying to get inspired.
12:25a.m.-1a.m.: You slip into a caffeine-fueled insanity and you doubt your sense of reality. You start cussing yourself out for not doing the work on time. Every word you type makes no sense. You struggle and struggle; it takes you 45 minutes to write a paragraph. You are half a second away from giving up.
1a.m.-3a.m.: You don't know if it's the stress or the coffee, but you catch your second wind. You start to focus on everything in extreme detail and you finally finish your papers. You open your notes to study for your test and start to feel more and more confident about it. The hopeful feeling of getting good grades comes back and you crack a smile for the first time all night.
3a.m.-5a.m.: The wall hits you want to pass out. Coffee doesn't work, since your blood is now half composed of coffee anyway. You can't keep your mind on anything but sleep. You want to leave, but you still have so much to do. You are the edge and you wonder why you are in college to start with. You open a link to search for what careers pay well but don't require a college degree. All hope is lost. Will you stay and tough it out, or leave and give in?
5a.m.-Class: You stay knowing you are going to hate yourself tomorrow. You gather the last bit of energy you have and finish all your work, and regardless how badly the assignments might have been done, you are proud of yourself. You go home (or not), shower, and get ready for the day. You walk into class smiling, because you have just put more effort into the class than anyone else in the room. You find your seat and get your papers ready to turn in.
Then the professor walks in and announces to the class all due dates have been pushed back a week. You smile as you scream your head off on the inside.
