As students, especially as college students, the concept of the all-nighter is not novel to us. It is something that we have all probably done multiple times in our school careers. We all have gotten to the point that we have procrastinated so much or we just have so much work to do that we throw caution to the wind and stay up all night long. In theory, this sounds like a good idea, right?
By staying up all night, you gain a few precious hours to do work, so hopefully, you can make a large dent in your to-do list. Oh, how I wish it worked out that way! For some reason, whenever I pull an all-nighter, it never turns out the way that I expect it to. I never finish the work that I expect to finish and the exhaustion that comes about as consequence is sometimes too much to take. Yet, somehow I find myself pulling another all-nighter all the time.
Stage 1: Excitement
In the beginning of the night, it is exciting to think about staying up all night and getting so much work done. The idea is romanticized in your head and you don’t realize the repercussions of your decision. But you know what, at this point, you could care less because you are probably up to your eyeballs in work to do.
Stage 2: Production
When it is early in the night, it is so easy to find your groove and actually get work done. Popping in your headphones and lip-syncing along to your favorite song while you are busting out some notecards for your final seems so natural and easy at this stage. Since you are getting so much work done, you still haven’t realized how awful this decision really is.
Stage 3: Exhaustion
Eventually, you work so hard for so long (or you’ve had a series of long nights like this) and you start to crash hard. This is when you pull out your trusty red bull and hope for the best. However, no matter how caffeinated you are, it doesn’t seem to help and keeping your eyeballs open is a struggle. Somehow, you decide to keep working and that is a miracle all on its own.
Stage 4: Perseverance
After you make it past the exhaustion stage, you are at a point where you are so tired that you aren’t tired, if that makes sense. Basically, you are so close to being done with the assignment/paper that you are doing and you just have to push through until the end. If you stopped now, the whole night would be a waste.
Stage 5: Indifference
Eventually, you reach a point that you are so numb to the fatigue that it wouldn’t make a difference if you got any sleep because you would still feel the same way when you woke up. When you are at this point, you keep trying to do work but no matter how hard you try, either nothing comes out right or you can’t convince yourself to pick up your pen.
Stage 6: Regret
As soon as you see that sunrise, a heavy wave of regret comes over you. You’re angry that you stayed up all night, confused because you actually didn’t get that much done even though you were working all night, and sad because you are just so freaking tired and you miss your bed dearly.
Stage 7: Acceptance
Once it hits around 9 AM, you eventually have to come to terms with the awful decision you made. You are probably dying inside on your way to class—if you even make it there. Any nap that you take during the day just makes you feel worse and any caffeine that you have doesn’t seem to do the trick anymore.
This cycle happens every single time, yet somehow we still decide to pull all-nighters all the time. Why do we do this to ourselves? That is a question that we will never know the answer to. If you are pulling all-nighters in preparation for finals, I wish you the best of luck and may the curve be ever in your favor.
