So I have previously mentioned that I am a student at the University of Kentucky. Well this is my first semester of college EVER and its coming to a close quite nicely. However, there is one slight problem. My sleep schedule is way out of whack. The beauty of finals week is that there are no classes, bad news is there are finals. Fortunately there is more good news. I got lucky with the classes I picked this semester and wound up with only two real final exams. Sadly there is more bad news. My first final was on Monday. My second and last final is tomorrow, Friday. Seeing as I had Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to do pretty much nothing with finals, that's exactly what I did. One night I even stayed up until 6 a.m.! That was not a problem though considering I did not have any finals the next morning. Unfortunately tonight, it is 4:30 a.m. and I have to wake up no later than 8:30, giving me only four hours of sleep maximum, assuming that I fall asleep right this very second, which sounds great to be honest.
One of the things I have learned over the years is that there are three different stages of sleep. Sure they have technical names but for the sake of not making this a lecture, we're going to call them pre-sleep, light sleep, and hibernation. So pre-sleep lasts roughly 30 minutes for me. This is when I'm drifting off to sleep and just letting my thoughts run wild. Then we have the light sleep. This is my favorite sleep particularly because I am a night owl. This sleep is the best because it can be used to my advantage. It basically works as sort of a time bomb. Once I fall into this stage of sleep I can be woken up any time after I fall into this stage and not feel tired. However there is a time limit. It usually limits to somewhere between 5 and 6.5 hours. Once the hibernation stage of sleep has begun, let's just say, you don't want to wake up this angry bear because it gets ugly.
So as you can now understand, the light sleep stage is my personal favorite. But tonight, I am just not tired at all. At this point I feel like I would be ready for sleep somewhere around 6:30 a.m. and that's not even getting sleep with how early I have to wake up. That's more of a nap. So I have officially made the executive decision to pull my first college all-nighter. Hold the applause. In honor of this special time in history, I have done a little research on how to pull the most effective all-nighter ever (because let's be honest, this all sounds great in theory but its easier said than done... I'm gonna poop out in a few hours and that's really gonna be the time where I just need to get my head in the game and pull through to make this all-nighter happen). So without further ado (and perhaps some consultation of search engines on how to pull a super effective all-nighter), I give you my plan of action:
Step one: Turn on all the lights in the dorm. This is to ensure that I am alert and awake. Nobody can sleep with all the lights on.
Step two: Coffee. Fortunately since it's finals week, the library Starbucks is staying open all night. Wait, who am I kidding, I'm a lazy motherfucker. I'm just gonna use my handy dandy keurig. Too bad I already cleaned out the fridge which had all of my creamer... Hm... I hate black coffee...
Step two:
Step three: Various distracting activities. First plan of action is to finish season 7 of How I Met Your Mother on netflix. I have 8 episodes left. While this sounds great though, my attention tends to wander a little. So to keep me busy while watching How I Met Your Mother, I plan on doing my nails and writing a letter back to my cute little cousin who drew me the most precious picture I have ever seen. The doing my nails idea works as a double whammy actually because I can't get into bed with wet nails. These should keep me busy for about two hours. This puts me at 7 a.m.
Step four: Play music. Upbeat loud music. Perhaps even dance a little. To get my blood pumping ya know? This is going to be the most critical time of my all-nighter. If this doesn't work, I'll have to jump to step six a little early.
Step five: Shower time. With music though. For some people, showers wake them up. For me, they chill me out. However, it needs to be done. I was planning on taking one before my morning exam anyways. Might as well get it out of the way.
Step six: Coffee (for real this time). Since this is the crucial part of the night where I may decide to just take a little nap, what would be better than walking around in the cold and then topping it off with some hot coffee, filled with caffeine?
And hopefully by this time, it'll be 9:00 a.m. which is about where I needed to be to get my day going. Hopefully this doesn't put a damper on my final final exam of the semester and my three hour drive home. If I can make it through those things, it can finally be nap time and thus ending my crazy second all-nighter ever. My first one was from playing World of Warcraft all night with my cousin. Fun fact, I'm kind of a nerd.
Toodles!
