Up All Night

It is 2:48 on a Thursday night, or I suppose, in all correctness, Friday morning, and in the effort to stay awake I have pledged to eat a Snickers every few minutes. It’s a brutal commitment, but one must do whatever it takes. I have three different assignments to complete, and by this point I have started all of them, swaying back and forth between each task (and occasionally the Los Angeles Times horoscope page) with the sad hope that I will discover a killer strategy fpr completing everything at once. Then I will lie down and fall asleep faster than you can say, “Another Snickers?”

But my brain has abandoned me by this point. I stare at the computer screen’s glow. Ooh, unfortunate prediction for Cancers today.

It is in this state of delirium that a thought occurs to me: This is quite possibly my last night of high school procrastination. I grab a Snickers. Clearly, when I go to college things will change. When I have an essay to write, I will not persuade myself that watching Modern Family online will stimulate my thought processes. I will spend hours upon end in the perfect library cubicles designed for people just like me. I will obviously sit on the lawn under red-bricked buildings, mechanical pencil in hand, and, backed up by nine hours of sleep, plan out my week of assignments.

I tear off another Snickers wrapper and sigh. Somehow tonight has managed to present itself as a sort of hangover, an uncomfortable aftereffect of senioritis. My lack of productivity leaves me with a bitter mindset that is completely useless when it comes to calculus projects and all too relevant if the topic is sleep. A political science assignment that would have taken 20 minues back in the motivated days turns into a tedious, three-hour slog. I again note with strange suspicion the fact that my brain has fallen out.

One more week.