Ah, your first all-nighter, a magical time in college that almost every student has gone through at least once. Much like getting your driver’s license or graduating high school, it is a rite of passage. Those of us who have multiple times know its ups and downs; however, we all are capable of surviving the five stages of the college all-nighter.
1. Denial
It's 7 p.m. on a Monday night, and you are ready to start your first all-nighter. Armed with coffee and a backpack full of notes, you stroll confidently into your school’s library, ready to finish this assignment. All nighters can’t possibly be as bad as everyone always makes them out to be. Sure, it’s a 10-page term paper that needs an annotated bibliography with 12 sources, but it shouldn’t take that long, right? After all, you’ve cranked out papers like this before, this is no big deal! You’ll be done by 3 a.m. at the latest, and then you’ll have enough time to sleep before your 11:15 a.m. the next day.
2. Anger
10:30pm rolls around and you’ve barely even written two pages of this paper. How is this possible? You are so mad now you can barely think straight, or maybe it’s those 4 cups of watered-down coffee you already chugged from the library’s café? Either way, you’re frustrated at how little progress you’re making, and at this point you hate everything that caused this all nighter. You hate your professor, you hate this assignment, and most of all you hate all those hardos who definitely started this assignment three weeks ago and think they’re all that, like that smug girl in your math class who thinks she’s all that.
3. Bargaining
Okay, it's 12:30 a.m. and you have three pages left to write. After chugging some water, and watching one episode of Bob’s Burgers, you’re calming down. The one problem: you want to sleep more than anything in the whole world. Your eyelids are drooping, and this puddle of drool is a pretty good indicator that you’re ready to pass out on this desk right now and stop writing this paper. Maybe you can ask your professor for an extension? Its only 14 hours till the deadline, they’ll definitely let you, what professor would ever say no to this request?
4. Depression
It is 3am, and you are so tired but you still have 6 pages left to write. You feel like you’re dying as sleep seems as far away as graduating college in a few years. Looking away from your computer, you remember happier times when you were a carefree college girl who only thought about what grimy frat party you were going to that Saturday night. Now, you are a shell of that woman, seconds from tears as the lack of sleep hits you and your overtired emotions go into overdrive.
5. Acceptance
You look outside the library window and see the sun is starting to rise over the ugly concrete buildings of your campus. It is 5 a.m. the next day, 7 pages of your paper are done, and you have 12 more hours to finish this paper, and maybe squeeze in a nap before your class. It was rough, but you now have survived your first all-nighter, and you know you are stronger for it. This all nighter was a rollercoaster of emotions, but you know you will never have to pull one again.
…That is until you have to write that French paper next week.
