Trying to keep it together

Pulling an all nighter is all about perseverance, will power, and personal pride. No one pulls all nighter's for fun. Sure, you might "stay up all night" working on something, but you still went to bed at 7AM to get an hour or two of sleep before going into work or class. A real all nighter takes a drive to do something truly silly for a goal that is never really worth it, but you do it anyway so you can wear it like a badge of honor. Those who have been there are inviting in conversation and discuss it with you like a combat veteran. Those that have tried and failed look on with awe and bewilderment, asking themselves the questions that haunt you during the long hours of the night: was it really worth it? How did they do it? Why are they that dumb to submit themselves to it?

It all began when my advisor convinced these technicians to come show us a piece of equipment. Now I had used this at other schools, but we were doing a "demo" to see how it worked so that my advisor could write a better grant to buy one and so we could get the machine to ourselves to run samples.

The goal was to convince them to let us keep it overnight to run samples. Other people in my department weren't optimistic, I admit even I had my doubts, but when the time came they came up with the idea to let us have it overnight to run the samples we wanted to run.

We finished that batch five hours ago, and now my lab assistant and I are working straight through the night to run as many of our samples as possible so she has data for her poster session next week...and so we can avoid a four hour road trip to and from Boston next week (which we still might need).

This is a little easier than my last all nighter in the fact that I haven't caffeinated yet...yet. Last time I had a red bull around 2AM and another around 4AM or 5AM and then coffee and other high caffeine drinks throughout the day. By the time I finally went to bed I had been up for over 40 hours and woke up into caffeine withdrawal and haven't had coffee since.

I'll probably take a 5-hour Energy at some point to make it through the morning/day. I foresee and early crash on this Thursday night and hating myself on Friday. But at least the samples will be finished.