My First All-Nighter! (...almost)

It's the stuff of college, right? Every self-sacrificing, self-respecting student must admit that sometimes, just sometimes, there isn't enough time to fit it all in, no matter how hard she tries. What is sacrificed? Time surfing the web? "Useless" (but sanity-sparing) hobbies? Extracurricular commitments? Meetings? Meals? The classes themselves, the ones that we've committed our minds and hearts and endless hours of our days to? Maybe. Maybe these can be sacrificed. But how can a good, committed student admit defeat? We want to prove we can do it all. Maybe we can't, but we don't want to show it. It would make us look lazy. It would make us look irresponsible. It would make us look undisciplined. No, surely that won't do. The only solution -- the only solution -- is, then, to give up that activity which no one else sees you do: sleep.

I've made it through college, and to be sure, it wasn't easy. Every semester filled to the gills with classes, student groups, work, band, volunteering, and all those little leadership things that look good on the resume, not to mention the occasional (hah!) illness to put a wrench in things. There were many times when there was just so much to do, and so few hours in the day in which to accomplish them. Many times when sleep hours were carefully, gradually shaved, slowly building a fatiguing debt. Many times when the ill-feeling caffeine high was all I could rely on to get me through the day...and evening and night.

BUT.

Call me lazy, call me weak, call me whatever you want, BUT I never pulled an all-nighter. Sure, there were plenty of weeks where consistent 6-hour (or less) nights built up to a fatigue so deep that the first hours of the morning felt like a haze, and the late hours of the night left me with no feeling in my body except a melting, wilting numbness (I'm looking at you, COT). Sure, there was that one time when I had to give a presentation the next day but was so tired that I had to sleep 2 hours, get up and write my speech at 2 a.m., and then go back to bed for the remaining 2 hours of the night (if that wasn't a weird experience, then nothing is). But no, I had never even considered suffering the formative experience of the all-nighter...

...until last night. Yes, I said considered. Last night, after catching an episode of Colbert, knitting an inch of my Norwegian sweater (it's really coming along!), playing some Chopin on the piano, and learning "La Bamba" on the ukulele, I discovered that I was scheduled to present the renal case conference today. The idea of presenting didn't bother me; I've done plenty of presentations before. No, what really froze my insides was the fact that I've been a little, shall we say, irresponsible. I had not been keeping up on my renal studying. In fact, I had only gotten through the first of 6 lectures -- and a good understanding of all 6 was necessary to present completely and coherently. Yikes. So at 9 p.m., I made a pot of tea and settled in, resigning myself reluctantly to the thought that perhaps I would experience my first all-nighter because of kidneys, of all things.

I didn't. I finished at 3:30 a.m. Sure, that's much later than ideal, but hey! I got to sleep for 4.5 hours. Not bad. At least, not as bad as it could have been.

So now the real question: Did I learn my lesson?

No. But look how far I've gotten on my sweater!