AWWW OMG WHAT BB OMGGG STAAHHHPPPP

This could be you…but will it be?

It’s the tail-end of midterms time, meaning that you don’t necessarily need to pull an all-nighter. But should you stay up an extra hour or five? Bwog’s Alexandras have kind of morphed into the same person by this point, but they disagree fundamentally when it comes to staying up. 

To Sleep, Or, Am I Really Making This Argument?

Turn off the damn Netflix. Do you really need to watch that fourth episode of Parks and Rec? No, you damned don’t. The glow of the computer is casting an unhealthy, pallid light on your face, and the only other sounds around you are sirens and that drunk guy on Broadway. I know, I know: it’s so easy to stay up just a few more hours; it’s not even that late. And it doesn’t count if you’re not in Butler, right? (Don’t even get me started on the Butler argument. Are you really telling me that that 3 am round of edits is going to help your essay at all? The only contribution you will be making is drooling on the paper.) This is relaxing time! Eight hours is for the weak. If you’re lying down, your body thinks it’s asleep.

Nope.

Stop pretending you are too good for sleep. Or that you have to pull an all-nighter. The last time you should have pulled an all-nighter to read was when the last Harry Potter book came out. Anything else is just you pretending that you’re at all processing what you’re reading, and that it will still exist in your brain after a few hours. Fun fact: your body uses sleep to flush the brain of toxins. That means that denying yourself sleep equals poisoning. your. brain. POISONING.

I understand everyone’s workload. I go here too. But I also understand that moment when you don’t have any work for the night but hey, you’re already up, you need to unwind via that nice calming bright white Mac LCD screen and dick around on the Internet because sleep will evade you unless you scroll through Buzzfeed for about 45 minutes, and oh yeah you should send an email to your aunt, ooooh are there any Iggy tickets coming up in the next few months? BAM it’s 4 am.

You could have spent the last few hours bonding with your brain and your stuffed elephant, and instead you read “Ranking All The Love Interests In The Mary-Kate And Ashley Films.” I bet you didn’t even email your aunt. When are the Olsen twins going to help you in life? Probably not when you make an idiot of yourself in lecture tomorrow because your brain is softly weeping to itself, trying to recover from the Youtube videos currently swimming around in its system, toxifying the whole place up.

Furthermore, if I overhear one more “who got less sleep last night” game being played over lunch, I will punch someone in the face. And then give them some warm milk and put them to bed, because that just makes me sad. Sleep = you feeling better, thinking better, and obviously most importantly, looking better. Don’t you want a campus of attractive people? An army of zombies with giant black circles swooping under their eyes and into their pallid cheeks does not make for an attractive campus.

Just fucking sleep. I am tired of your excuses. Your dreams are probably more interesting than Parks and Rec, anyway.

so much less cute than that damn baby

Party! Party! Party!

Not To Sleep, You Old Fogey

Hell no, we won’t go to sleep, you lame ass. You absolutely need to watch that fourth episode of Parks and Rec–lit’rally, you need to. It’s good for your health to give yourself some time to decompress and get those worries from the day out of your head.

If you try to sleep now, you’ll be up for hours agonizing over the answer you gave on the midterm and the assignment you have to work on and if your crushed noticed when you spit up your coffee when he said hi. Instead, take some time to get your mind off stressors. Come on. Just one BuzzFeed article. It won’t hurt. Just one. You can stop anytime.

Let’s face it: you’re going to be just as tired tomorrow morning no matter how many hours of sleep you get. Just go to the coffee like you do every day and get a $2 cuppa. Do you seriously think that with an extra hour of sleep you’re going to wake up tomorrow totally energized and ready to go?

Anyways, you have work you could be doing–everybody always has work they could be doing. Yes, yes, you have these lofty ideas of waking up at 8 tomorrow and getting things done but let’s be real, it’s never going to happen. So just stay up now and get some shit finished! Don’t be lazy, pick up a Butler pastry and power through.

Your brain is working right now, so you better edit that essay. While your brain is getting rid of toxins as you sleep, it’s also breaking your line of thought, so when you pick up the essay tomorrow you won’t remember that really groundbreaking idea you thought of right now. You never know what could happen before you get a chance to look at it tomorrow and then you’ll turn it in only afterwards to find that horrifying “organism/orgasm” typo. Don’t let it happen. Add the “ni” now. There’s no time like the present.

But it doesn’t have to be all work and no play. Like I said, there’s always work you could be doing, which means you can take a night off. Go to Senior Night, bitch! Pregame with your friends in stupid costumes, wondering if anyone else will be dressed up, go wait on line, talk to that kid you haven’t seen since LitHum, get inside and see everyone that you know and then take 15 shots because…everyone that you know is there and social interaction is hard and most people suck. But it will be great!

These are the memories you have for the rest of your life. Do you really want to tell your kids about that time you had a full night’s sleep at reasonable hours? No! Tell them about that time you twerked between someone in a bad Miley costume and someone in a bad feminist Robin Thicke costume. This is the one time in your life where you can go out on a Wednesday night and not give a damn to tomorrow–skip that 8:40 am lecture! Hate to break it to ya, but it’s not like Khalidi will notice your absence.

And seriously? You think beauty is determined by sleep? Invest in better blush and under eye concealer. It’s 2013. We have the technology.

Baby and babe via Shutterstock