For many Dartmouth students, the word "all-nighter" immediately ups their adrenaline and increases their heart rate, bringing back strung-out, caffeinated memories. Others can only imagine what it would be like to be deprived of sleep for an entire night, panic and hit the books. For the lucky ones, the word only brings up fond memories of shenanigans with their friends. Our parents, professors and The Stall Street Journal constantly remind us that cramming is the least effective way to study, that we need a good night's sleep before an exam to perform our best. But there are those who swear by using all-nighters to study.
"I pull one every time before a bio exam without fail," Christina Danosi '13 said. "I won't remember things if I learn them a week in advance. Two days in advance is as far as I can do."
There's something about those wee hours of the night that can make them prime study time except for the fact that you haven't slept in 24 hours. Wendy Xiao '14, who usually pulls two all-nighters every term, said she prefers this study tactic because being the only one awake means she is immune to distractions from other people. Xiao noted, however, that pulling more than a few all-nighters a term would probably substantially decrease their effectiveness.
There are still those of us who like to maintain a sleep schedule that's as close to non-nocturnal as possible.
"I refuse to pull all-nighters," Meeta Prakash '13 said. "I think it's unhealthy, and I don't get that much accomplished when I'm tired."
When all-nighters aren't a part of one's concept of effective studying, they can seem foreign and terrifying.
"If I had to pull one, I would freak out and shut down," Kathleen Herring '14 said. "I don't work well under pressure."
Herring has, in fact, pulled one all-nighter in the past.
"I listened to Heart Vacancy' 70 times to keep myself up," Herring said. "It was awful, so I don't plan to repeat that."
People who frequently pull all-nighters, however, might not run into the problem of hating a song at the end of the night because all-night studying is built into their term and life.
"I have accepted that I am going to be up, so I do it with smile on my face rather than dreading it," Danosi said.
Both Danosi and Xiao have been pulling all-nighters since high school, and as a result, they both said they don't ever need the help of caffeine or study drugs during all-nighters. Danosi said she has become naturally good at staying awake and becomes nauseous if she has too much caffeine.
"My normal bedtime is 3 a.m., so I stay up late anyway," Xiao said. "I've gotten used to it."
For those who aren't typically night owls, pulling all-nighters is all the more foreign. Herring, who is one such person, said she uses music to stay up because her brain "goes dead around 11:45 p.m."
Of course, beyond the actual staying awake part of an all-nighter, there's what comes after.
"When you're awake, you're awake," Danosi said. "It doesn't hit me until later. If I pull an all-nighter on Thursday, I'm fine on Friday, but by Saturday I'm dead."
Still, no matter how long an all-nighter might leave you charged, in the end, you're still sleep-deprived. Xiao said she has actually taken naps during exams to keep herself going.
Not everyone pulls all-nighters for academic reasons, though. Some people just do it to have fun. Although Prakash said she has never pulled an academic all-nighter, she said that it was worthwhile to stay up all night her freshman year the evening of bequests for the women's Ultimate Frisbee team.
Staying up for good times you'll remember rather than hellish ones you want to forget make the short-term consequences of lack of sleep well worth it. On her Foreign Study Program in Barcelona, Herring pulled a particularly memorable all-nighter that had nothing to do with schoolwork.
"It was worth it because we were wandering," she said. "We found a club and got to dance, and then we found the perfect bus to get us back to our houses."
Between academics and fun, all-nighters are a shared experience for many college students.
"I feel like in your four years, it would be rare to find someone that has never stayed up all night, for academic or nonacademic reasons," Danosi said.
Staff writer Reese Ramponi contributed reporting to this article.
