This is amusing; I look back at earlier entries here blog and how bad I was at pulling all nighters. Now I’ve become a bit of an expert.

A few weeks ago I got my first essay of this year back and scored a lowly 49. My tutor calmly and coolly ripped me to shreds, telling me that “it was abysmal and I was generous in my marking it.” Ouch. After this essay I found out about the opportunity to spend a term in my final year abroad, which sounded pretty damn exciting. As much as I love Brighton, I think going to India gave me a severe case of cabin fever upon returning to England and so, I jumped at a chance to spend anytime I could in another country. I missed the chance to spend the WHOLE of this year abroad because I was too lazy to inquire, so I made sure I applied this time around. The only catch was that you had to have a 55% average and have a decent attendance record.

In other words, I was pretty fucked. Last year I started off well enough in my essays, but later on in the year I got REALLY into drinking myself into next week, finding beauty sleep more important than lectures and seminars (I’m a pretty ugly guy) and ignoring any and all work until the very, very last minute. At the end of the year, I was tasked with 3 essays all for the same day. That week I decided it was more important to soak up the sun at the beach and repeatedly get drunk in the afternoon and ended up facing all three essays with a deadline of less than 24 hours. After coming closer to suicide than I ever have before, I managed to get them in, but the marks were pretty crap. I ended up scraping my first year with an overall 53% mark.

So already I was off to a bad start at getting that placement abroad. I spent more of my time this term looking for someone to replace me in my old house and looking for a new one than studying, and it showed in my first essay for English Literature. I had another one a couple of days later and spent over 24 hours in the library, tanking myself up on Lucozade and coffee, not starting my essay until around 7am (14 hours after I got in the library).
I also had to get a reference letter from one of my tutors to reccommend me for the placement, which was another spanner in the works because for the most part, none of my tutors had a clue who I was because of my crappy attendance. I went and sucked up to Polly, my media studies tutor and the only teacher I got on with and who’s class I did well in and she agreed to do it.

The next week I found out I got a 68 in my latest essay!

So Polly sent off the reference as she now FINALLY had something positive to write about me. Not wanting to let her, or myself down, I went back to boring old London for a week to get my act together and actually read some books for once, seeing as how I’m studying English Literature. That proved to be a bad move as when I got there, my family automatically pounced on me as the ‘Tech Support Guy’. Apparently, because I know how to use a toaster AND turn on a computer, I’m the next Bill Gates. So I had to fix the wireless Internet, install an external hard drive, install anti-virus software, get phones connected to the wi-fi, backup the computer’s files, configure mail domains and reconfigure Robocop’s software so he can get back to fighting crime. I spent more time in front of a screen than a book and had my hands full of wires and cables instead of pens and highlighters.

My parents later decided to leave the country (finally) and go for a holiday in Goa, but it was a bit late. I came back to Brighton two days later, heading straight for the library and spending the entire night there. That was yesterday and today I’m back again. Having gone through 2000 words so far, I need to write a 2000 word short story and a critical reflection on it which amounts to 1500 words. Fun times! It’s 1:30 am at the moment and I haven’t really got anywhere, I’m just faced with 7 pretty intimidating looking books and my laptop.

How many all-nighters have I pulled in this place now?
The first time for my media essay, which ended with a great result for me. I made it through the entire night without feeling even a little bit stressed or tired.
The second time was a little less productive… like, WAY less productive. If I tried, I could probably never be less productive in my life. I had no essays or work in for a while, but I decided to join my friend Fiona in her all night session because I thought the first one was pretty ‘fun’, believe it or not. This time around, it wasn’t I spent the first portion of the night watching Prison Break and Heroes, then moved on to trying to force myself to work, which didn’t happen because I wasn’t feeling that delicious last minute pressure. Instead, I contemplated for ages whether it was worth booking a ticket to California to see some friends in December. Apparently it was, as I ordered the ticket and in around 6 days I should be landing in Los Angeles. That night in the library cost me £366 and really fucked around with my sleeping patters; I still find myself waking up at 3pm and going to sleep at around 5am because of it.

These all-nighters are becoming quite standard for me. I’m actually enjoying them a little bit now because there’s none of those bloody distractions… except for writing in this bloody blog, of course. I’m really liking being forced to walk through all the isles of books and being forced to sit down and read them. For once, I actually feel like I’m learning something when I do this and it’s always fun to run into a friend in the maze of literature who is in the same shit as you, frantically trying to get an essay done before the sun rises and reminds you that the time is ticking…
It’s starting to feel like home, this place. You have your neighbours, some of who you might be friendly and on speaking terms with, and you’ll stop and say hello to them. Standard things to talk about include how stressed you are, even if you’re not, because it’ll either make them feel better or give them something to talk about. You might want to ask how long they’ve been there, when there deadline is, etc, etc. More often than not you’ll try and avoid eye contact so you can skip the boring conversation altogether and get back to checking Facebook every 2 minutes doing your work. Frequent visits to free your bladder of all the energy drinks and coffee happen, and you’ll now find yourself familiar and friendly with the security guard at the reception, who in the early hours falls asleep a bit.

It’s only 2am now, but my eyelids are getting incredibly heavy and I’m feeling kinda drowsy… I haven’t had my fix of Lucozade and I doubt the empty cafe downstairs has any left in the vending machines. And if they do, I doubt they’ll take my £20 note, the only source of money I got. Maybe I should start doing my schoolwork earlier than a day before it’s supposed to be handed in?

Argghh.

Okay, 7 books to look through, one 2000 word short story to write, a critical essay on it of 1500 words and 14 hours to go. And then I can hibernate for a week.