Tales of an all-nighter

Tuesday, December 2nd 2008 did not exist for me. Or better, I didn't exist for Tuesday December 2nd. I skipped the day, most of it. I caught a glimpse of the beginning and barely saw the end. Nothing more. The story goes something like this...

Following a terrible personal tradition, I procrastinated the writing of a 12 page term paper to the day before the due date (Tuesday, Dec. 2). The research was done and I had taken all the necessary notes...but it was 10 am on Monday and I hadn't started writing. Not a single word, not the thesis statement, no intro paragraph. Nada.

It usually takes me about 2 hours per page for an academic paper....and that's when the structure and argument have already been laid out. So, hoping for the best, I opened my computer, took out my books, spread out my notes around the table, and braced myself for 24 hours of writing.

Fast forward to Tuesday morning. At approximately 9.15 am, with bloodshot eyes and a bunch of coffee cup carcasses lying around, I clicked "Print", ran to my professor's office, desperately succeeded in finding a stapler, and finally turned it in. And then I finally went to sleep. After eating a banana. At about 10 am.

As usually happens when I pull all-nighters, I assumed I would sleep for 4 or 5 hours, and then wake up at lunchtime to enjoy the rest of Tuesday in zombie mode, either preparing for a final or going for a run to clear my mind of the previous day's essay marathon. I had even planned for some post-essay grocery shopping. But no. I opened my eyes at 10.30 pm. The entire day gone...vanished!

Oddly enough, I was still feeling exhausted, so I had some cereal and went back to bed and here I am, on Wednesday morning, trying to come to terms with the fact that I missed an entire day.

Details

"In the early 1990s I built a workable time machine. All it lacked was the flux capacitor and 1.21 gigawatts of electricity."

-Atrios, responding to Ken Pollack's reminder that “in 1990, Iraq built a workable nuclear weapon. All it lacked was the fissile material."

(For context, see Kevin Drum)
p.s. thanks Carnivoro

Stephanie Says

Some people get very creative and imaginative when it comes to procrastinating. I decided to investigate what kinds of activities or non-activities people invent to pass the time while evading their work...and I received some fabulous answers. Here are my favorite five:

5. Spend all morning in a hip music store, just to upgrade your scenester lingo.
4. Spend half the day on Expedia ... just in case the prices of flights to Europe suddenly drop for a second and you're online to take advantage of this unexplainable window of opportunity.
3. Visit the beach with a frisbee in hand... because it's a pity to be inside when the sun is finally out.
2. Go on a quest to find the best deal on highlighter pens in the city...to use them for studying, obviously.
1. Finally start reading that book that you've been setting apart all year.

As for me, I've found this to be the most enjoyable substitute for work:

The last all-nighter?

It is 5:48 and I have just typed the final period of my penultimate essay of this term. I compared the use of verbs in Langston Hughes's "Harlem" to the lack of verbs in Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro." So what? Well... the reason I had to pull an all-nighter (apart from the fact that I'm a master procrastinator) is that I couldn't get Lou Reed out of my head. Yesterday at 9 pm, when the essay was in its first page, I couldn't concentrate because "it's so cold in Alaska, it's so cold in Alaska" wouldn't stop ringing in my ears. So I grabbed my guitar and spent about an hour figuring out how to play it. Then, out of the goodness of my heart, I decided not to annoy the neighbors and resumed my writing. But as I was halfway through the second page (at around , 1 am), I was hit by some "Pale blue eeeeyes" on an incessant loop. Damn you Nico.