Up All Night

Welcome to college.  You now don’t have every class every day, and you have free reign of when you do your work, as long as you get it done before it is due!  All of this free time and freedom seems great at first, until you realize how poorly you have planned your time and now your assignment is due in less than 12 hours!  After procrastinating, it’s time to pull an all-nighter!

When you decide an all-nighter is absolutely necessary, it is best to have a plan and come prepared.  This includes knowing what you need to study and how you are going to do it, such as make notecards, rewrite your notes, or just read the book.  Before you even leave your house, make sure you have everything you will need for the night.  It is a good idea to bring your books for that class, notecards, pencils, laptop and charger, drinks, snacks, and any other studying items you deem important.  What you snack on throughout the night can either help or hurt you.  Be sure to choose your snacks wisely and keep yourself hydrated.  Don’t choose snack that are full of sugar.  Sugar causes a short burst of energy, but ultimately results in a decrease in your body’s blood sugar level making you feel even more lethargic than before.  This crash of energy is hard to overcome.  Foods high in protein are best to eat during all-nighters because they will give you the long lasting energy you need, with no post-consuming crash.

Choosing a good location is the one of the most important steps.  In order to stay up all night, pick a place that has good lighting to help keep you awake.  Our bodies take darkness as a sign that it is time for bed, so if you keep it bright then you have a better chance of tricking your body out of becoming too tired.  Also, pick a location where you will not need to move later in the night.  Some buildings have a closing time, where you will be interrupted and asked to leave.  This will completely throw off your mind set and make it hard to get back in the zone.

One part of an all-nighter that is often overlooked is to set an alarm prior to when you need to in your class.  Most people do not think this is necessary because they plan to stay up all night, but what happens when they accidentally fall asleep and miss the test or due date of the paper that they just spent all night working on?  Then all their hard work was for practically nothing.  So remember, before you start studying to set an alarm (or multiple) for the morning, just in case you do happen to fall asleep!

If you are lucky enough to finish your work earlier than you expected, then you can celebrate with a quick sleep before class.  As long as you have more than 30 minutes before you have to be in class… go to bed!  But make sure you have set multiple alarms; it will be harder than normal to force yourself to get out of bed.