Thursday, April 21, 2011

Ways to Stay Awake

So, I remembered this story as I was trying to fall asleep the other night. A difficult attempt most nights, but especially difficult as of late. Anyway, I thought I'd share this, instead of sharing anything from my current life. Because its my blog and I can do what I want.

Once upon a time I was a lowly grad student, working as a TA in order to pay the bills. Or at least pretend to pay the bills, because lets face it, the income from that job barely covered food and gas money. Anyway, it had been an extremely long semester, what with catching the swine flu, then pneumonia, then playing catch-up ALL semester from my 2 weeks of illness. I had never really worked to the wire during finals, but this week of finals was different. So, it was Thursday night, all finals were due Friday, and I also needed to complete my TA work by Friday evening as well. Luckily, my TA work was very easy - grade a bunch of tests using an answer key. I decided to pull my first all-nighter and grade papers through the night, finish my last final in the morning, and then crash at 5 PM when everything was finally in. How did I complete this feat, you ask? By watching "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." All night. Its amazing how much grading you can get done watching Buffy, and also how the scary elements of that show really help you stay alert (since you never know if a sound you hear is your roommate breathing or a vampire sneaking in to attack you).

Anyway, moral of the story - Buffy can help you do a lot of things. Survive work, stay up all night, slay vampires - anything you need.