The Night Belongsto...

Th e all-nighter. It never was anythingvery special,just anotherpartofthelifeof astudent.Itwas somethingwe didtogetby,to make theendsmeet.It was,initsstrictestdefinition,asleeplessnight devotedtostudying.

The all-nighter did haveafewrulesassociatedwithit.

Rule One: An allnighter was not planned.Itwasspontaneous and unexpected.

That was what madeit sogreat. Itusuallybeganinnocentlyenough.

A studentwith abelief thathecanhavehispapertyped intwo hours starts at midnight and finishes eight hours later. Or a student leaves reading the sevenbiologychapters untilthenightbefore,notrealizingtheyaverage80pageseach.

Planning would have ruined theall-nighter.Studentswould havelinedupafew cupsofcoffeeinadvance,made surethey had change for the Coke machine and generally been pre- paredtogothewholenight.

Rule Two : An all-nighter is productive. A trueall-nighter has to produce some work by sunrise. Itwasconvertingthesix books you checked out of the library at 10:30 intoa 10-page paperforyour8o'clockclass. It was typing your 15-pageessay on a portable typewriterusing the hunt-and-peck method. It was reading The History ofthe ChristianDoctrineby Klotsche in one all-night sitting. It was