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March 21, 2003
On the Horizon
I’m always proud to tell people that I never pulled an all-nighter in college. Simply never had to. Then again, I was an English major, which is not exactly pre-med in terms of scale of class and homework.
I loved taking critical theory classes, because…well, I’m a frickin’ dork. But these classes always came in very useful, since even if I didn’t do that week’s reading, I could just bring up Foucault or Aristotle or Judith Butler and somehow weave the idea to exactly fit something I’d never read. Didn’t matter what the reading was. ‘Yea, so, what I’m thinking is, when Christopher Robin is telling Winnie the Pooh that he’s growing up, that’s simply a Sassaurian signifier for the loss of the Lacanian phallus.’
And the grad student leading the section would go, ‘Hmmm…anyone wanna respond to that?’ Which of course no one did, since what I had said, while technically English, was a completely made-up language. The teaching fellow, on the other hand, was often too bored by the section to realize what I was saying was utter bunk. They usually had that perpetual ‘I can’t believe I have to teach these morons about the Charles Dickens when my dissertation is on the concept of ‘home’ in mid-1834 Dutch science fiction novels’ look going on.
Anywho, last night I almost pulled another all-nighter. Kind of emboldening, in a way. Thought I had lost the capacity to stay up past midnight, but lo, here was the sun coming up. I’d love to assign some deep meaning to all of this---a reconnection with youth; the confirmation that my body, while far from decrepit, is not in fact losing it’s vigor; that reckless destruction of my sleeping pattern is still a viable option.
Mostly, though, it was great watching the sun come up on my porch. Reminds me of one of the last almost-all nighters I pulled, in 1995. I was on the crew of a show over at Harvard and, long story short, the set really was nowhere near done the night before it opened. So about 30 of us pulled up our sleeves and got to work with paint and wood in a big way. Must have had second, third, and fourth winds that night. Walking home with the stage manager, we stopped off in the courtyard of her dorm and watched a brilliant Spring sunrise while talking about everything but the show.
This anecdote is the reason I gave to everyone of why I loved doing theatre so much. Even though I’m inactive on the theatre front, memories like that keep me warm.
Posted by Ryan McGee at March 21, 2003 01:43 PM
Comments
I can't think of a time in college when I pulled an all-nighter for academic reasons. I've pulled near all-nighters (2 hours of sleep or less), usually to keep someone else company or to fight with whoever I was dating at the time... or printing out my thesis, but that hardly counts as I wasn't doing academic work. I was just reading Superman comics and manually removing each completed page from my broken-down printer. (At the time, I was too poor to use a photocopier, so I printed all four copies out on my rickety old Mac printer.) And I still got 3.5 hours of sleep after the printing and hole punching. Another proud Harvard tradition I just plain skipped.
Posted by: Commander Foley at March 21, 2003 02:00 PM
Freshman reading period, I stayed up 42 hours straight working on my final project for Intro. Comp. Sci (CS50). When my code jumped off the screen and started running around the room, I realized it was time for a nap. After an hour of sleep, I went back to work for another 16 hours or so.
My project was a disaster, as lack of sleep led to lack of critical thinking.
So, you didn't miss much by skipping the all-nighters (except seeing freshman going crazy in the computer lab).
Posted by: John at March 21, 2003 02:15 PM
How anybody majors in CS, I'll never know. God love ya all.
Posted by: ryan at March 21, 2003 02:21 PM
I did stay up until 5 in the morning once designing the Der Freischutz poster. The design that Jose had wanted got nixed, so I had to basically start from scratch... at 1 in the morning. I seem to recall around four in the morning, the poster looked like it was in 3D on my screen.
Posted by: Commander Foley at March 21, 2003 02:24 PM
I remember specifically one night I stayed up until 5:30 am..working on my last and final house design project...glue, xacto knives, paper , materials thrown everywhere, one sock on one sock off...totally caffeine overload. Back then we had to write reports with our hands-on projects and draw everything on AutoCADD. I would be damned if my white foam core house didn't have every piece perfectly placed even the great designer Mies Van der Roh would of been proud. I was so DOG ASS tired presenting it that next 9am. But ahh college...not for the non young bodies. I am definately old now...I so go to bed at 9:30 most nights.
Posted by: jada at March 21, 2003 02:43 PM
Aside from the first two programming classes, I didn't work that hard in CS. I took 3 linguistics and 2 psychology classes for my major. The easy classes allowed me to work on even more shows. Woo!
Posted by: John at March 21, 2003 03:39 PM
Jada,
as someone going to architecture school next year, it warms my heart to hear of the long nights ahead. I'm tired already.
Posted by: John at March 21, 2003 03:41 PM
I only pulled all-nighters my sophomore year. The most memorable one was the night the boxes arrived. I was writing a paper on Christ imagery in Dr. Fasutus when came a knock at the door. Boxes galore. I didn't have time to deal with the boxes, so I stashed them under the window and returned to work. Also, it snowed that night.
It's about 7AM, I'm about ready to go to breakfast and re-fuel to write my conclusion, and 'someone' walks over to the window and says "Oh my God!" I said "Yup, it snowed last night." Minutes later, 'someone else' ran over to the window. "Are those your boxes?" "No." "Are they Cathy's?" "No."
"Okay..."
My paper was due at 10AM. The "please come by the house office" email arrived before I left for class.
Posted by: anne at March 22, 2003 11:24 AM
Boxes. Now I know which Anne you are. Hi Anne!
Posted by: Gili at March 22, 2003 01:56 PM