The Easiest Road To Health Hell: All-Nighters
Sep 27 '01
The Bottom Line Hate them and still have them, your worse nightmare and the most ritual habit for college students. All-nighters!
No all-nighter is worth it. If you can just remember that, you’ll be fine.
Some will argue that if they pull an all-nighter they will actually catch up with work, school, college, whatever. I think that if you cut down one hour of TV and one hour of internet a day and skip a couple of parties this weekend, you’ll be geared with time to catch up with anything you want in your life. Ok, not anything. My own college experience proved that no matter how much time you’ve got on your hands, there are things you can’t do physically. Then why do you need an all-nighter if you still can’t do the darn thing?
In the past two years I’ve had enough all-nighters to get a headache just on the possibility of having another one. I thought an all-nighter or two would save my college career. I thought I would just sit down and work 24 or 48 hours straight. So I did sit down and for the past week have been working on my project 18-20 hours a day, two times I pulled an all-nighter. I’ve gone completely psycho and learnt everything there was to know about MS Access, but I have not finished the thing. I got kicked out of college, but on the outcome I have more than that.
Last day before it was due I decided to put in the project everything I had. I’ve stayed awake for 36 hours exact and that’s after practically sleepless week. I’ve done something, mind you, not everything. I’ve found so many ways to improving the database I’ve been working on, that it even made me proud of myself. I feel like I can teach MS Access course in any college right now. So, after all that, having not completed the thing, being kicked out of one of the best technical universities in the world, what do I have?
First of all, I have a completely ruined health. I’ve been sleeping last night [and day] for 18 hours. I still feel weak and sick. My body became an easy target for all kind of diseases and infections. I think I have flu, let alone sleeping disorder. I bet my headache won’t leave me in the following weeks. Huge load of depression I’ve been fighting since Sep. 9 [correct, two days before “…”] won’t go away. No Prozac can fix it, because hey, there is no Prozac in Russia.
If you want to get a picture of a college student having lack of sleep, imagine a 19-year-old, shaking because she’s cold and her body refuses to fight it, shaking because her nervous system is saying bye-bye, shaking because her head doesn’t think straight. She has no idea what’s going to happen in the following few hours, she can’t move because she feels weak, she can barely type this because her arms, hands, fingers are just not moving. Her head is somewhat of a huge bell on the main Cathedral that can’t stop ringing. Everything and everyone seem annoyingly hypocritical. Best friends are too busy with their lives; everyone else just doesn’t matter to her. Nothing matters anymore.
That’s Finn after one week of all-nighters and stress. Remember that outcome is not what she thought at all: project is not done; on Monday she picks up her documents from college. Life is basically ruined, but not because of the college. I can’t imagine the process of rehabilitation I will have to go through. I can’t imagine how much time it will take for me not to wake up at 4 a. m. in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep. I don’t know when I can stop going from one extreme [3-5 hours of sleep a day] to another [12-18 hours].
Does Finn look like a human being? Not anymore. Will she ever be? I hope so.
What can prevent you from being in Finn’s shoes? [If your size is greater than 8, I bet you won’t fit in anyway.] Good time management skills is the answer. Managing time in college is the most important thing of all. Turn off TV, say no to the party, go and study, take breaks and go to bed before midnight. For more information, refer to the appropriate section on Epinions.com.
All right, I understand that not everyone takes all-nighters to the extreme I did. I understand that most people actually have things they have to do and can do, just need another few hours. I do understand that those people will feel like hell and all, but at least after a few days they will recover.
How to take easy on your all-nighters and survive them?
I used to have “save” all-nighters. One of the “classical” examples is my computer science exam in January. On Wednesday I happily survived math exam and on Saturday I had to face Computer Science. All exams in Russia are oral [except for economics and other classes in some colleges], so amount of stress and information to be learnt, err, crammed, is great. I gave myself Wednesday night to recover and on Thursday I was left with two days to prepare for the class I knew almost nothing for. I was a computer idiot before that exam. In two nights and one day [Friday, to be exact] I learnt the semester worth course. It was fun because instead of notes that I did not possess [bad student] I was using internet. Basically what I did, was visiting Apple, Microsoft, etc. web sites and looking for technical details and explanations. My friend gave me a few sites he found helpful in learning a lot about computers. So, I did have fun learning. All I needed to be sure of is that my body wouldn’t give up on me.
Here is a laundry list that might help:
Health is always your number one priority! If you can’t be sure you will have all the time in the world to sleep and rest after all-nighter and exam/or whatever thing you’re working so hard for, then don’t have an all-nighter. Also, if you feel like you’re falling asleep on the keyboard and it doesn’t matter anymore if you fail or not the class you’re working so hard for, then go to bed.
Three hours rule. If you have three hours left before the exam, don’t go to bed, go jogging, or have a breakfast, or surf the web, or find someone to talk to [I’m usually doing that, sorry, all my friends!]. If you have four or more hours left, then go to bed, period.
Do NOT take stimulants. Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT take stimulants. That means, no coffee, no drugs, no whatever you can come up with. What works: hot sweet tea [it can be considered a stimulant, but not the one I’m talking about in this paragraph]. I also drink juices or milk: calcium, vitamins, you can’t be wrong with that.
Snacks are your enemies. Your friend is a good dinner full of proteins: fish, chicken, turkey [Thanksgiving leftovers! Right on time for finals, aye?]. That will add energy. Though some of you will have a trouble getting yourself a hot dinner at 3 a.m., so you better think of that ahead.
Take breaks and the rest of things you’re doing while studying [refer to the appropriate section on Epinions for help].
Roommates! I’m lucky, don’t have any. I have a family, though, that doesn’t appreciate me typing reports in the middle of the night. They don’t appreciate me going to the kitchen and exploring our empty fridge once in a couple of hours. They technically don’t appreciate anything I do during all-nighters, but being supportive with my education [number one value in this family], they let that happen once in a while. You have a roommate who needs to sleep before his/her own classes/exams. Please, make sure to inform them you’re up to studying all night. You can work it out at 8 p.m. and your roomie will spend night at the neighbors, err, maybe, or anything else that works. Being mad, tired and basically unhappy the following week is not a plan.
After an all-nighter make sure to have enough sleep and rest, then treat yourself to something nice. Keep it in that order, I know that I usually think of going out after a successful exam and then realize I’m too tired to enjoy my night out. In my case, the last all-nighter was no success, it was a disaster. I’m tired, ill, sick, feeling like hell and hey, still treating myself to a movie tomorrow morning before I will go on with my life.
And now look back and read what I’ve started this with: no all-nighter is worth it. Sure, exam has been passed or term paper has been turned in, but seriously, it’s not worth watching Road Rules reruns instead of studying and then pulling all-nighters. If you make studying at night a habit, you’ll end up feeling like Finn.
No all-nighter is worth ruining your health. If you can just remember that, you’ll be fine.
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