The stages of an all-nighter at Brookes

The all-nighter is an unfortunate part of the average students routine, especially now as deadlines are looming and we’re up to our eyeballs in coursework due before the Easter holidays. Luckily we have the JHBae with comfy seats, silent areas and 24 hour vending machines to get us through the emotional and physical distress of staying up all night to get that final essay in.

The dread and panic drives further into the hours of the mourning, until finally you give in to the sweet release of sleep. This journey started long ago, back when the lecturer said something very simple: “the deadlines are in the module handbook”.

Procrastination 

The longest part of the all-nighter at Brookes. This doesn’t just mean walking around The Forum trying to find someone to gossip with or scrolling through Facebook a few times. This can last days, weeks, even months. This is when you should have been compiling essay drafts and revision timetables but instead, alcohol and the internet enticed you. You were weak and didn’t realise the price.

Procrastination, still 

Now you finally remember that deadline everyone in your class has been moaning on about for two weeks. Just ignore it, you don’t really care anyway as this is just another problem for future you to deal with.

Panic 

OK. The Turnitin drop box has been uploaded and the deadline is no longer a week away. It’s in two days. How have you only written the title by this point? What’s the word count? Why didn’t you start sooner?

I see the words, I have the citation, I understand nothing

Resolution 

At this point, where the assignment is due, you have a group presentation at Wheatley tomorrow and you have no new Tinder matches anyway, nothing more can be done. You have to pull an all-nighter. This realisation is the first step closer to handing in your assignment and putting a smile on your seminar leader’s face. Pack your bags, put on your best tracksuit and begin the pitch-black walk through South Park to get to the library.

walking up Div Road is the worst part

A stockpile of essentials will be needed. Chocolate. Red Bull. Maybe steal your housemates bread and make a bacon sandwich to hold off the hunger. These will be your salvation in the face of midnight munchies.

This isn’t a battle, it’s a siege. Who can outlast the night, the project or you?

Beginning

You have found a table, finally. Third floor, silent area, next to the window looking over the forum. Its time to start reading, taking notes, forming a plan. Your snacks are laid out with military precision for when you need them. You even turn off your phone, despite that yak you just wrote about your all-nighter being the funniest thing you’ve ever written. This is dedication. This is progress. This is for a 1st. This is boring as hell.

A filter can often make reality seem less awful than it actually is

Fatigue

Its happened. You’ve hit the wall harder than a fuckboy hits on a drunk girl in Fuzz. Its 11pm and that 1,500 words you’ve done seems like a tempting place to call it quits. Maybe Uni wasn’t for you anyway. Didn’t you dream of being a pilot as a child? didn’t you want to be a cowboy, a princess, an astronaut? Don’t you owe it to your inner child? Apparently not. You get back to work, and hate yourself a little for it.

The End

You lay down your pen, your mouse and your motivation. You’ve done it, Abstract and all. A master craft of clever argument and keen observation from a mind running on caffeine and the thought of wasting nine grand. Its over. Its finally over. You close all the tabs. You close all the books.

Its over the word limit.

Fuck.

The hand in

You upload the file to turn it in and give in to sleep. It cradles you like a warm blanket, setts you down as gently as a cotton seed in the wind, wraps your mind in a sweeter oblivion than any drug. You only have one thought as you drift off in your room, surrounded by the rest of your coursework “I’m never doing that again”.

It happens next month, as sure as the sunrise. Which is just happening. Time for that 9am.