It’s Week 6 now, and it’s that time of the semester when everything starts to catch up with you. With one Hall event after another, work starts coming in and arrows start to fly at you from every corner, and there’s still school work to contend with. In other words, Hell Week is almost here and all its demons – procrastination, distraction and denial are running amok. There’s no way you’re going to get through this unless you pull off the classic trick: an all-nighter. But before you slip into panic mode, here’s a couple of tips to help you get through the night without hitting the snooze button!

For starters, do not, under any circumstances, try to do your work on your bed. Yes, the chair that you’re sitting on is a hard piece of plastic and you’re going to get that awful cramp in your back come morning. It’s tempting to finish your work in comfort, but imagine depositing yourself onto a nice, soft mattress when you’re close to REM mode. Not a chance kiddo. Before you know it, you’d already be in dreamland and your work would have become a makeshift pillow. Trust me on this one.

Halfway through your little marathon, take a cold shower, and I mean a REALLY REALLY cold shower. The shock of having millions and millions of ice cold water droplets splashing all over you from a cold metal tap is more than enough to jolt your body into awake mode and you’ll be able to return to your work in a fresher state of mind. What’s more, it’s a welcome change from all that monotony and you get to finish your work smelling good; hey, you get to kill two (or maybe three) birds with one stone!

Resist that temptation to logon to the Internet to play the hottest game in town. That tiny mini game in Sims 3 or a short puzzle-solving session on Candy Crush Saga will always turn into an all-night marathon to stake your claim as the top gamer in the country (or at least, your Facebook friends list) while everything else sits in a corner and collects dust. So, fight that urge to escape into an alternate reality and tackle everything once and for all!

It’s normal to feel like giving up halfway through an all-nighter, but that’s what your neighbours are here for – to help you keep awake if you’re on the verge of falling asleep!  Better still, get together and have a mass marathon. As they always say, all labour is easier when shared.

Good luck! C:

chueonit.

Originally published on SHOUT.