Sleep Deprivation

A few days ago my roommate and I decided to pull an all nighter. Well, he decided to do that and I decided to help him do that. He, being a freshman engineer AND a procrastinator, had amassed a huge amount of work to do for the next day. I'm talking 30+ pages of calculations and programming. He started working at maybe 4 pm but decided to take a break for dinner and stuff. 8 hours later he remembered his huge assignment. I told him that if he was going to work all night, he might need something to help him out, and he agreed. So we went out at about 12:30 am to aquire some energy drinks. We came home with a 4 pack of Amp and a 4 pack of Monster. I am not a huge fan of either, but my roommate likes them, so whatever. I had one of each. Twenty four hours later, I finally went to sleep.

Staying awake a long time often seems like a good idea because it gives you so much more time to get things done. However, staying awake more than 16 hours or so starts to take a toll on you, both physically and mentally. After about 18 hours of staying awake, I began to experience the first of these problems: short term memory loss. I had just taken a test that day, maybe 6 hours ago at that point, but I couldn't remember taking it. Hell, I couldn't even remember going to it. An hour later I began experiencing loss of inhibition. I began just doing whatever random thing I thought of. My roommate took a ideo of me to prove it. I staggered around acting like a monkey for a while. After that, I felt extremely cold and lost the will to move. I sat in a ball on the couch underneath a pair of blankets for maybe two hours. During that time I never once looked around. I stared straight ahead, zoning out. My speech became slower and unintelligable. I also began to find things hilarious that I normally wouldn't even smile at. I could tell my roommate was experiencing the same things.

If you are planning on staying up all night for something, remember that you will not be quite functional without sleep. The next day you will be a zombie. Only do it when you know you will not have to do anything difficult the next day. DO NOT STAY UP ALL NIGHT BEFORE A TEST! The extra study time is not worth the consequences. It is much better to be able to think through problems on a test than to have memorized all the answers but find yourself unable to remember them.