All-nighters. Love them or hate them, they are a (totally and completely avoidable) part of the “Cambridge experience.” Here’s my five stages of Hell for you:

8PM: Denial 

You sit down to write your first essay of term. It’s on something you enjoy, it can’t be that painful, right? You’ve got 1800 words of notes, and a solid plan. What could possibly go wrong? You’ll be done in a few hours and in bed by midnight, maybe 1am at a stretch.  

10PM: Anger 

You’ve read your notes. You’ve reread them. It seems that you wrote them in a zombie-like state of sleep deprivation, and in a shorthand you can no longer remember. Some of the more lucid thoughts amongst your pseudo-analytical drivel appear to have been taken from secondary criticism… this would be fine, if you knew which authors they came from.

You feel yourself starting to sweat, made worse by the apparent comedy set going on downstairs. Don’t these people know this is a library? You do your best to stifle your eye rolls, which are so passive aggressive that the people working across from you can probably hear it. You listen more closely, and realise you can’t tell if it is laughter wafting up from the lower levels, or sobbing: good God people, it’s Week 3, what have we come to? 

Your music is not helping you remain calm. Britney Spears’ Womanizer comes on shuffle, and you rip out your headphones in sheer disgust at the song’s upbeat nature. I mean, really! At a time like this?

"Good god people, it's Week 3 - what have we come to?"

0.00AM: Bargaining 

You’re writing, and things are moving, but very slowly. The library has emptied entirely, and you almost wish the mystery laugher/crier had never left. You tell your future self that you will work much faster if you just get those few books you left in your room. But the five minute walk somehow takes a full 40 minutes, and by the time you get back to your laptop the word count that stares back at you from the screen, somewhat unsurprisingly, hasn’t changed.

You tell yourself that if you can write 1000 more words in the next hour, as you should absolutely, definitely be able to, then you can eat the Galaxy you have stowed away. This is the incentivised academia you were made for.

An hour passes, and you have most definitely not written another 1000 words. You eat the Galaxy regardless.

3AM: Depression 

Your best friend texts to say they are going to bed. It all feels a bit Day After Tomorrow — alone in the library, eating enough snack food for an actual meal, a sense of terrible and uncontrollable doom. The whole works. 

5:30AM: Acceptance 

Out of nowhere, you get the energy to press on: you’re not sure if it’s nervous energy or sleep deprivation, but words are pouring out, and bizarrely some of your best ideas seem to crystallise at this moment when you should definitely be in bed. Simultaneously, you wonder if a single line of this will make any sense when you read it back. But it’s too late now, your brain is on a powerful autopilot incapable of stopping. 

It's now 6.30AM. The essay is done. You are finally free. You limp to your room and collapse into bed. You awake hours later and crawl to class, but not before drinking three coffees so fast that you might now actually be able to hear colours. As you’re about to leave your room, your laptop makes that oh-so-anxiety inducing *ping* — you’ve got mail.

You dash to check it quickly. It’s your supervisor. A moment of panic — did you forget to actually send your essay in? Was it all for nothing? But your heart sinks even further when you realise it isn’t that at all. The supervision has been rescheduled, for four days time. Cursing the eternal futility of human existence, you pick up your laptop, and leave for class.