If you plan your time well, you should never have to pull an all-nighter.
However, if you are a college student, chances are you have suffered through at least one.
All-nighters are unadvisable for countless reasons. Not sleeping for a whole night is deleterious to one's health, ineffective for completing academic work, and can lead to making some very poor decisions with regard to both one's schoolwork and one's life in general.
The truth is that even one all-nighter can be harmful to your health and studies have shown that undertaking many all-nighters will cause you great harm. Some of the effects of sleep deprivation include irritability, increased risk of getting sick, decreased cognitive functioning, and inability to concentrate.
In terms of academic performance, sleeping a few hours is always better than not sleeping at all.
"One study looked at whether sleeping after memorizing something was helpful and it found that it definitely is," Director of Health Services Jeffery Benson says. "That it actually helps to sleep on something after you have done some work, and that it helps engrain the information in your brain and make the memory a little more permanent and a little more solid, that's really interesting," he adds.
Aside from hindering your ability to memorize facts, pulling an all-nighter will inevitably cause a "diminished ability to perform basic cognitive tasks," according to a study published in the journal Nature in 2000.
Sleep deprivation also leads to mistakes. The Exxon Valdez oil spill has been attributed to exhaustion from lack of sleep, as has the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The mistakes that led to the Challenger space shuttle disaster have also been attributed to NASA employees' lack of sleep.
The lesson is, of course, to get some sleep.
If you make the unwise decision to pull an all-nighter, at least do it right.
1. STAY AWAKE: There are many rules that one ought to follow when pulling an all-nighter, but this is the only one that truly matters: If you are asleep, you are not getting your work done.
2. FOCUS ON WORK: Just because you are awake does not mean your paper-writing or studying is getting done. Although it may seem almost impossible, you must focus on the task at hand. If you decide to pull an all-nighter but end up socializing and then cruising around Facebook until sunrise, you may well find yourself in an unpleasant situation later in the day. Examining the profile of your long-lost friend from middle school will not help hone your paper's thesis or teach you about your upcoming exam. It will teach you, however, about how much your friend loves "24."
3. TAKE BREAKS: While you are studying, it is important to stay focused. But no one can stay focused on work for a whole night. "Do things to take a break from the intense intellectual and academic work," Benson recommends. "Take a walk outside, for example." Light cardiovascular exercise and fresh air will help keep you think more clearly. If you feel yourself dozing off, get up and walk around.
4. PICK A GOOD SPOT: Wear comfortable, loose-fitting clothes and study in a cool, well-lit environment far away from your bed. Even those students who possess immense willpower may have trouble resisting the urge to sleep for "just a few minutes" if their bed is nearby. And often, "a few minutes" can turn into a few hours. It thus behooves a person pulling an all-nighter to work in a locale a good distance from his or her room. If possible, study in a location with other people nearby?you will be less likely to fall asleep. The computer lab in Kanbar, which is open 24 hours a day, is as good a place as any. The computer labs in Coles Tower are also open all night, but the door to the Tower denies keycard entry after 1 a.m. if you do not live there. Moulton Union is also open 24 hours a day and pulling an all-nighter there provides the added benefit of breakfast accessible at 7:15 a.m. without having to step outside.
5. EAT WELL AND OFTEN: If you are not sleeping, you will need to eat more than usual. You should also eat well. Stay away from sugar and simple carbohydrates, which will give you a short energy boost but then cause you to crash. Stick with healthy snacks like fruits, vegetables, cheese, and yogurt. Nuts, a good source of protein, make a particularly good all-nighter snack. It is also important to stay hydrated, especially if you choose to use stimulants such as caffeine.
6. GO EASY ON THE CAFFEINE: Stimulants can certainly be helpful in the successfully getting through the night, but willpower and a positive attitude, corny as it may sound, can take you further than a cup of coffee, a Red Bull, or a No-Doz. Also, caffeine is a diuretic. Multiple trips to the bathroom may disrupt your train of thought.
7. NO PAIN, NO GAIN: You will likely find the hours between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. to be the toughest. Fight the immense and overwhelming urge to sleep. Taking a 15- minute nap is not a good idea. A short nap will likely cause what experts call "sleep inertia"?intense grogginess and inability to think clearly?for up to an hour after you get up, dramatically reducing your ability to engage in academic work.
8. DO NOT DRIVE: Studies have shown that after 24 hours without sleep a person's driving ability is impaired at similar levels to a person who is drunk. With little or no sleep, operating heavy machinery, nuclear power plants, space shuttles, etc. would also be a terrible idea. Unless you can be sure your thoughts will come out of your mouth coherently, you may also want to refrain from commenting heavily in classes.
9. FINISH THE JOB: Hand in the paper, take the exam, show off your final project. You have successfully completed an all-nighter. You probably did not ace your test or write a magnum opus, but at least it's done.
10. GET SOME SLEEP, BUT NOT YET: Once you hand in that final paper or finish your final exam, it is likely that you will want to immediately have a long visit with Hypnos. Resist the urge. Wait until a reasonable bedtime before finally snoozing. "Maybe, in the afternoon, take a short nap?but less than hour or 45 minutes," Benson said. Otherwise, he warns, you will likely mess up your sleep cycle more than you already have.