I actually pulled more (and more epic) all-nighters in High School than I do now. Each year we had a massive interdisciplinary project, (Think full business plans, mock scientifically based court cases, etc.) and that always caused us, in our prospective groups, to pull some crazy work nights.
In my senior year, aside from the “fun” projects, my physics class was completely worthless. The instructor was a completely pretentious asshole who arbitrarily decided not to teach my class. He was very knowledgeable in physics, but considered us unworthy of “receiving his knowledge” Anyway, I made it my personal goal to contradict all of his blanket generalizations and produce what he considered to be impossible for each project. Two of them, a roller coaster and a boat, were the best. In the first, we were to build a marble rollercoaster with only 3” x 12” strips of paper and tape. Most were really fun to watch, but pretty standard. Loops, hills, etc. My group and I worked on it for 3 days straight. It was a 9’ masterpiece with carefully calibrated jumps, pressure activated platforms, and a rotating arm that carried the marble from one track’s end across a 2’ gap to the next section. That involved neon paper strewn across all surfaces, small paper scraps inextricably mixed with carpet and furniture fibers, diagrams on every acquirable scrap of paper, discarded bits of tape stuck to chair backs and walls, and 4 seriously fanatic teens wired on way too much coffee, ito-en green tea, and Hawaiian barbecue.
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The boat project was similar, but 10 times as epic. The working time frame was about the same, only this time we spent the first 5 days obsessively scouring several cities for the best material because….. the boat was constructed from cardboard.
The house became a cardboard storeroom. In our frenzy for efficiency and accuracy, traditional boxcutters were not good enough, so we whipped out a few fixed-blade knives with partially serrated edges (8” blade lendge) and cut through industrial-grade cardboard as if it were cardstock. My friend Brandon’s mom, having put up with our work habits for some time, just made sure that we didn’t cut through the carpetting or gouge her wood furniture. We had stacks and stacks of packing tape which we used to waterproof the components during the process. That was acheived methodically, with 3 layers and careful overlapping and direction switching. After our three days of work, we produced a boat that carried two passengers comfortably and was propelled by hand-cranked, paddle wheels at the right and left (which doubled as the directional system!) After two hours class competition, our wheels began to dampen, because it is hard to seal circular sections and internal corners well.
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Still, while this next one is only a near all-nighter, it will always trump all other events for soon to become obvious reasons.
The most epic event involving sleep deprivation in my life is the weekend I met my husband. I met him at 5:23 on Friday, November 9th, 2007, when I joined a group of friends already in line to see Randall Munroe (author of XKCD and President of the Internet) speak on campus. The events of the night (and my life) resulted from one brave and totally uncharacteristic decision: I chose to accept his invitation to sit with him and some friends from our Student Activities board near the front. Needless to say, we got along fantastically. In the course of the evening we:
– attended the gallery opening for space artist and painter Lowry Burgess (also my [then] new friend’s mentor,)
– made an appearance at KGB‘s semi-annual game of CTFWS (which is epic in its own right) which that night featured Randal Munroe as a participant (to whom we presented the 10 pages of rules during his talk,)
– returned to his (hubby’s) apartment where all of his former roommates were supposed to be meeting for a roommate party, but left only 6 minutes after arriving because everyone had canceled!
– talked for hours about anything and everything on a hill overlooking downtown pgh
– traipsed through interesting pieces of the sleeping academic buildings
– stargazed on the Kraus Campo in 28ยบ weather
– and then realized it was 4:30 a.m.
I got home at 5:00 a.m and slept only until 8 because I was so energized. We met again at 2:30 in the afternoon, accomplished and experienced equally awesome things, and then fell asleep in one another’s arms around 4:00 a.m., beneath snowflake shadows making their way across the apartment walls.
Since then, we’ve decided that our 31-hour social experiment (including the rest of Sunday) can be thought of as 11 distinct “traditional” dates.
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PHEW! What a trip down memory lane! Sorry for having been so long-winded, but I took it as an opportunity to record some good times as I’ve not done it in the past. Thanks for such a GQ!
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