It is four o’clock in the morning. You are writing one of those essays that if personified you’d stab in the eye with a blunt knife. You’re doing the second all nighter in a row and it has resulted in a number of things.
Firstly, never before had you realised that watching the cursor blink on and off for a whole five minutes was actually quite intriguing. Secondly, you can’t allow yourself to think about sleep as when you do your mind enters into a Star Wars centred fantasy where sleep plays the part of the force and your essay the part of Darth Vader, meaning that instead of researching what you should be, you’ve ended up loosing 25 euros for a one month subscription to the Star Wars fan club.
As if all of this along with losing the will to live was not enough, physically your body has stopped working. Although it can still manage to do some of the basics (if you call basics lifting up your hand to forcibly open your eyelids), the real problem is with your mind to body co-ordination. For example if you want to write the sentence “In the year 1916 a contract was signed enabling a change to be made within the grounds of society” what you get is “society of grounds the within made be to change a enabling signed was contract a 6191 year the in”.
You are literally about to collapse onto the keyboard when a light shines at the end of the tunnel. That light is the new 24-hour study space that you have just ventured through the hordes of rain and wind we’re experiencing at the moment to get too. When you reach the light you may not find enlightenment, but you will find a bunch of other students just as disorganised as you, all watching their cursors in an insomniatic state. Although they may not be able to help you with all aspects of your essay, it does help knowing that you’re not the only one stupid enough to leave everything so late.
And it’s always a bonus when they can help you decide whether to go as Luke Skywalker or Princess Leia to your first Star Wars convention.
