All-nighter tales: Your very first time

The first time can be scary. Especially when there are caffeine pills involved. This week, Street interviewed three students about their first time pulling an all-nighter.

Hyung Lee ’12: It was when I was writing my first paper for my writing seminar. It was weird, not because I had a lot of work — only three or four pages — but I was procrastinating. I stayed up all night with Red Bull. I was so tired, because I hadn't slept for two days. So then I went to the bathroom and blacked out for a bit, and then went back and finished it. It was so weird: One moment I was in the sink, and one moment I was in the corner of the bathroom. And that's how I learned about the dangers of procrastination. Except I haven't really learned my lesson; the last all-nighter I pulled, I did nothing. I legit listened to 10 hours of music in a row. It's ridiculous. You can go through a band's entire back catalog.

Alec Slatky ’12: It was in ninth grade. I had to do a children's book about Victorian England. I was all alone in my room, and everyone else had gone to sleep. I had to format everything and print it out on the right paper, but I didn't start the project until that night. It got to be like 5:30 a.m., and school started at 7:30, and I took a bus around 7, so I figured, at this point, I might as well not sleep. Because in ninth grade, it's cool to say that you pulled an all-nighter. So I stayed up and watched a little bit of SportsCenter until the bus came. I told my mom to guess how many hours I stayed up last night, and she was mad, but then I did well on the assignment so she couldn't stay mad.

Ruthie Nachmany ’12: A definite step toward my first all-nighter occurred in 10th grade, when I joined the literary magazine and consequently decided that insomnia would be the best way to improve my writing. I never pulled an all-nighter until my senior year of high school. I was both pleased and upset about it — I was happy that I did it, but also unhappy because I had been proud to have been an all-nighter virgin. I guess it was good to finally get it over with.