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Bomboniera

Plus, now that I'm in my 30s, on those rare occasions that I'm able to pull an all-nighter and live to tell the tale, I find that it's all I can talk about. I have to tell *everyone* that I've been up all night. Although... that may have been true in my teens, too...

TangoMan

research paper on the history of IQ tests and whether they actually measure anything worth measuring.

OK, so I'm a betting man and I bet you used Mismeasure of Man as the source for your report and bought into Gould's Marxist slant. Do I win?

life is really quite painful when you’re going and going and going without sleep

I once had to go 4 days without sleep because I was deep into writing a massive research report. By the 2nd-3rd day I was into a weary fatigue but my mental faculties were still pretty sharp. By the end of the 3rd day and into the 4th I was finished with the writing was was now doing editing and lots of busy work like formatting tables and graphics and that was ok because now the fatigue was quite intense and in the moments when I let my concentration lapse I would start hallucinating. I remember looking up at a window and the window frame started pulsating. Wow, that's quite an experience.

Generally I found that it didn't pay to squeeze in the extra few hours of study before an exam and that I was better served by sacrificing the study time and getting a good sleep.

David Thompson

I stayed up all night once in college to write the Final Essay for a fine arts class. It was kick-ass paper I finished up about 6am, then I kicked the power cord on the computer and lost the whole thing five hours before it was due. I said some bad words, went to bed, and took my zero.

Natalie Bennett

Ah, this takes me back to the days when I had a student job (quite good-paying) that started at midnight and finished at 8am, after which I went to university for my second day in a row, without any sleep in between.

It was, in retrospect, quite insane. I used to keep myself awake by drinking intensely strong cups of coffee, until the day I took it just a tinsy bit too far and gave myself caffeine poisoning. (Threw up for three days.)

And there was this pig of a lecturer who I always had first thing in the morning, who always switched out the lights to show slides. It was always fatal. (We hated each other anyway, but this didn't help any.)

Luckily I'm a quick writer, so I never pulled an all-nighter to write an essay. My usual operating hours were, however, about 11pm to 3am - 3,000 words in that time was about right. Still could do that one if I had to ...

h sofia

Holy moly - I didn't know there was such a thing as caffeine poisoning!

That's intense.

For my part, I find I can still stay up, but I become pretty useless. Unless I get that sacred second wind. When my mind starts to go, I get up and start doing chores. For some reason, doing chores wakes my mind up. But after about half an hour of sitting still again, sleep becomes irresistable. So get up and clean a little more. I wish I could somehow write a paper while folding the laundry.

Natalie Bennett

Voice-recognition software?

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