[Q] All Nighter Question - Page 2
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Thorg23
United States19 Posts
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Iranon
United States983 Posts
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Chairman Ray
United States11903 Posts
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Ktk
Korea (South)753 Posts
One thing that helped me through my all nighters was to convert to a polyphasic sleep schedule/20 min nap every couple hours for that day. Since there was always the possibility that I wouldn't wake from an alarm, I had a friend (on the same assignment) call me after the 20 minutes. You don't convert to polyphasic sleep schedules in a day. If it's your first day trying at a polyphasic sleep schedule it won't pay off. Polyphasic sleep sucks for having a normal life, too. :p My all nighters consist of a playlist of mellow and water. Using the bathroom keeps you awake. I don't bother with coffee. When I'm desperately tired I'd get a NOS, those things are pretty crazy. But you will crash, so no good for what you actually studied for. (I use energy drinks mostly for essays, then I can be brain-dead for the actual day and it'll be fine) You could consider an energy drink right before the exam however, to keep you awake. After that, you can get knocked out. :> I think you want 2 hours of sleep - allnighters themselves aren't that great. However if you take the 2hr sleep option your sleep inertia may hit you hard esp since you haven't done this before? First allnighter is rather risky, esp. since it's an exam (mainly, recollecting facts you learned several hours before is not the same as writing a paper which is what I spend all-nighters doing) For chem/phys/etc. not bio/math exams use units to check your answers for correctness, skim review, memorize deceptive equations, you're set, right? GL on your exams! | ||
castled
United States322 Posts
The only time it might be a good idea to stay up all night for a test would be if the test allows a cheat-sheet where you can write down everything you know. Sadly I took some classes that were like this, and since they never tested on things outside of lecture you could copy everything down. If your test involves much critical thinking or math I wouldn't recommend it. | ||
Megaliskuu
United States5123 Posts
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r.Evo
Germany14054 Posts
Guarana will save your day (nights). Basically caffeine makes you extremely awake for a short amount of time (30-40 minutes, depends on the person) and afterwards you're sleepier than before. Guarana keeps you awake for 4-7 hours. Kinda like black tea, just stronger. | ||
hp.Shell
United States2527 Posts
Something you can try if you're new to this is just pull the all-nighter, but at 3 or 4am, drink some tea or coffee just before napping for 25 minutes. If you gulp down the tea and then set the alarm, it will wake you up a bit before the alarm goes off. Powernaps are good when you're trying to stay up for a long time. The tea can interfere with your sleep though so your nap quality won't be as good as it could be without it. Then about an hour or 90 minutes before you want to stop studying and "wake up" or start getting ready for the day, set a bunch of alarms 10 minutes apart. This is easy to do on most modern cellphones. Then get in your bed and try to go to sleep. When the first alarm goes off, you wake up and do whatever (but move your body, don't just sit still, you can roll in your bed or walk around or exercise) until the second alarm goes off, at which point you attempt to sleep again. Continue this pattern for an hour or so, but make sure the number of alarms you set is odd, otherwise, you might forget how many you set and end up sleeping waiting for the next alarm to get you up. Then about 25 minutes before your exam starts, drink an energy drink. Depending on the length of the exam, you should have just enough time to finish before you start feeling the crash. I recommend against chugging one just before you walk in as this will make you jittery and the sugar rush could really ruin your concentration. Good luck! | ||
whistle
United States141 Posts
In any case, make sure you get an hour of sleep right before your exam, in my experience that tiny bit of sleep helps me be much more alert the next day. You might feel like shit after sleeping for an hour, but you feel infinitely shittier after not sleeping at all. Again... the best idea is not to pull an all-nighter in the first place - I had three exams within 24 hours last week during finals and I had to stay up all night to study for the third one (math) after staying up pretty late studying for the first two the night before. I actually fell asleep during the final for a few minutes and after getting my final grade back today and dropping from an A to an ungodly grade let's just say I've made a resolution not to pull another all-nighter for the rest of the year. Don't make the same mistake! | ||
fishuu
United States369 Posts
Good luck with your exams! | ||
babylon
8765 Posts
On March 20 2012 12:45 r.Evo wrote: Caffeine is bad. Guarana will save your day (nights). Basically caffeine makes you extremely awake for a short amount of time (30-40 minutes, depends on the person) and afterwards you're sleepier than before. Guarana keeps you awake for 4-7 hours. Kinda like black tea, just stronger. If you stagger caffeine intake (~two cups of coffee for a night), you won't crash until 30 minutes after your last dose. Which might be during the exam, unfortunately. Don't pull all-nighters for exams. You'll feel like shit and also more than likely underperform on the exams. | ||
Fishgle
United States2174 Posts
For essays, it's college standard. If you're not used to all-nighters, don't do it. For example, my current sleep schedule is: don't sleep for about 20 hours (8am to 4pm the next day) , then sleep about 16 hours straight (next day, 8am), due to end-of-semester work load. It aint healthy, and i have no clue how i'm going to wake up for finals. | ||
r.Evo
Germany14054 Posts
On March 20 2012 13:48 Fishgle wrote: For exams, all nighters make you do worse than not studying at all the day before. For essays, it's college standard. If you're not used to all-nighters, don't do it. For example, my current sleep schedule is: don't sleep for about 20 hours (8am to 4pm the next day) , then sleep about 16 hours straight (next day, 8am), due to end-of-semester work load. It aint healthy, and i have no clue how i'm going to wake up for finals. So what you're saying is that you sleep 16 hours during 2 days. Aka 8 hours per day. How does that enable you to do MORE WORK? =P | ||
ClysmiC
United States2192 Posts
( just make sure not to fall asleep with gum in your mouth :3 ) | ||
affinity
United States266 Posts
On March 20 2012 12:35 Ktk wrote: You don't convert to polyphasic sleep schedules in a day. If it's your first day trying at a polyphasic sleep schedule it won't pay off. Polyphasic sleep sucks for having a normal life, too. :p Ah, I didn't mean to convert to a polyphasic sleep schedule, just adapt an uberman cycle for the day instead of staying up all night. I've done it couple times. I found it to be more effective than simply staying up the whole night because it gave my mind a break. Then again, I'm pretty used to taking naps/falling asleep fast. | ||
jubil
United States2602 Posts
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Scarecrow
Korea (South)9172 Posts
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RedJustice
United States1004 Posts
Anyway, keep all the lights on, turn on some music, and if you are looking at a screen that's even better. You want to distribute caffeine as evenly as possibly instead of gulping it down and crashing fast. It's also a good idea to take breaks and get up and walk around outside for a few minutes as the night progresses. Staring at one thing for too long can start to make things go in one ear and out the other. Don't eat too much food during the night as this can make you drowsy. Just get something with a little sugar to snack on (trailmix/mms/etc). Once daylight hits, continue to pace your caffeine, or if you feel really awake, bring some caffeine with you in case you start to crash. I hit a point the next day where I feel very focused and alert (some people don't but you won't know til you try). You may not be able to go straight to sleep after your test. Some of these things other people have said, but the more people tell you, probably the more likely it is to be true for you? I guess? GL. | ||
Artifice
United States523 Posts
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Divinek
Canada4045 Posts
tl;dr: study as much as you feel is useful but reaaalllly try to get as much sleep as you can even if that's just one hour. And for keeping you awake, besides energy drinks and caffeine just eat any food you can in small portions over the all nighter (keeps your metabolism high and makes you not want to sleep) and also give yourself nice doses of a pure white computer monitor to trick yoself | ||
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