“I thought I could make it. I really thought I could make it.” I said sitting at my computer. It had just passed midnight, the glow of the computer monitor was illuminating my room. A big document displayed in front of me, my hands hovering over the keyboard. I was exhausted, “This is what I get for procrastinating all summer isn’t it.” I leaned back in my chair and let out a big sigh. This essay was supposed to be at least three thousand words long and I had started at 9PM that same night. I’m not even halfway done. I had to make a difficult decision. Either I was going to stay up all night to finish this extremely important essay or I was going to save what I have, shutdown the computer, then go to bed.
I sat there silently and weighed my options for almost thirty minutes before realizing that if I were to stay up all night writing my essay it would just get progressively worse from my growing exhaustion. After making up my mind I moved my mouse towards the save button. Before I clicked it I thought to myself, “It might be really bad at the end but surely I’d get a higher grade if I just finished it rather than leave it half completed. So I moved my mouse back to the document, grabbed a glass of water, and got back to typing. Finishing this overnight was a game of focus and endurance. I was empty on motivation and energy so I was just pushing through the best I could. By 4:45 in the morning I had finished it so I printed the essay and stapled the papers together.
Two hours of sleep later I got up, fighting with every ounce of strength I had to keep my eyes open. I brushed my teeth, took a shower, grabbed my essay, and started driving to school. If the shower hadn’t woken me up as much as it did I wouldn’t have been capable of driving straight. I pulled into the school parking lot. As I was walking into the school my hands started to sweat. I was very anxious. “What if he gets upset with me?”, “What if he fails me?”, “What if-” I was suddenly cut off by my friend asking me, “How far are you on your essay?” I asked, “I’m done… Are you not finished with yours already?” He said, “No I’m not… should I be?” Before I could respond I realized I was going to be late for class. “Shoot! I’m gonna be late for class, I gotta go!” I ran into the class and managed to get there one minute before class started so I sat down, pulled out my essay and was ready to hand it in.
Class started and for the first thirty minutes of class nothing was mentioned about the essay so I was just confused thinking to myself, “What’s going on here? Isn’t the essay due today?” Eventually the teacher said: “Okay the rest of this class is going to be dedicated to working on your essay. Remember it’s due next week!” That hit me like a brick wall, I was completely ready to hand it in and accept the bad grade. I had lost hours of sleep just to find out that it wasn’t due until the next week. Despite knowing that I had lost hours of sleep on it, it was still a huge relief to know I could revise it. So I got out my laptop and started fixing the careless mistakes in the essay trying not to fall asleep.