Forty hours later, and I'm still standing.

So my first forty-hours-without-sleep-a-thon came and went fairly smoothly. Wasn't expecting it to happen, especially during Week 2 of Spring, but I guess practice makes perfect. Strangely enough, I still feel like I can go a good 3 or 4 more hours, but now is not the time for pushing the limits and more catching up with normality.

Before I do that, a summary of my forty-hour adventure: Woke up at 9 AM, Wednesday, April 14th. Got to school at 10 AM, finished up EE 115A HW, and worked on some top-secret Samahang Retention Coordinator stuff. Went to class at 1 PM, University Chorale @ 3 PM, caught up with SPEAR stuff with Rose over a brief early dinner, and then starting our project director interviews at 6 PM. We finished up the interviews at 9 PM.

Recommendation for next year: get a bigger room... with better ventilation... and windows.

After the interviews, we stayed another hour tallying our scores before going to the Mediterranean Cafe in Palms for some late dinner and qualitative deliberations. Overall, I was very pleased with our selection process. We had a lot of strong candidates, and all would have done a wonderful job as a director given the opportunity, but I felt that the committee did an excellent job of really getting down into the nitty-grittys to really allow the best people to come out on top. Although we could only choose two, all the candidates had some great ideas for the projects, and hopefully they'd be willing to come back to share their ideas about shaping the project for next year.

So the day was supposed to be over, with me getting some rest before my 8 AM lab. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to finish my prelab, which I really busted my butt on all week but couldn't understand all the concepts, so I had to stay up to finish. I figured that a little sleep would screw me up more than none at all; hence, the all-nighter. I ended up entertaining myself in between my prelab struggles with music from Cowboy Bebop, Jesus Christ: Superstar, and a showing of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (one of the funniest movies of all time!).

So my roomie wakes up, and since we both have 8 AM classes, he gives me a lift to my lab (with my still incomplete prelab). Our lab professor gets there about 10 minutes late, and proceeds to lecture for two hours before the lab. TWO HOURS!!!! That's friggin' half the lab!!!! Fortunately, the lab wasn't too hard, although I still was not able to finish in the two hours we had left. I'm gonna have to come back tomorrow to finish up, oh boo.

I have an hour break between 12 and 1, so I stop by the "Stop Budget Cuts!" Rally on the top of Janss Steps before getting some light lunch at LuValle. I then have a discussion from 1-2, and a lecture from 2-4. I then get another hour break where I work on an agenda for an info session for project staff hiring (yes, another hiring round). I facilitate the first half of the info session, and then take off for a meeting with the Campus Retention Committee chair to talk about our goals for our CRC external affairs subcommittee this quarter. We talk for about 20 minutes, with a 10 minute break, before the CRC meeting starts at 6 PM. (so to re-cap: no sleep for the past 33 hours, although I did doze off for about 20 minutes in lecture and like 10 in discussion, but that so doesn't count, and I've only had about one true hour of break over the last ten hours).

The CRC meetings at the beginning of the quarter are especially long because we have evaluations of the projects from the last quarter. So I'm getting really close to the breaking point (I'm starting to struggle to keep conscious), but I struggle to stay alert for the entire two-hour meeting. I then get some dinner out in Westwood and chill for an hour before I go to the dorms to celebrate 1st-year Cheryl's 19th birthday.

I was really happy to go, because I really got a chance to bond with the younger folks that I really haven't had a chance to do. Yeah, I've been to their dorms before, but I remember that I was feeling disconnected at the time (couldn't remember why) and simply felt out of the loop. I missed out on the One Step Ahead mentorship retreat, and I didn't exactly participate as closely with the STEP internship as I could have. After 35 hours or so of consistent work, I finally got a chance to relax and chill, and got a chance to relax with some really cool folks. Thinking about all the work, and thinking of them, really put into perspective the whole day-and-a-half, and made it all worth it.

I think the biggest thing that came out of this was the fact that I didn't freak or get frayed during the entire time, although I definitely struggled a few times. I'm actually really happy about the whole thing, because in the end, I felt like I came out on top, and that no matter what happens this quarter, I'll be there at the end, still standing.