Does this sound familiar? It’s the night before your dreaded histology exam and you have yet to memorize what seems like a thousand slides before the sun comes up. You decide to pull an all-nighter. This will not be the easiest and certainly not the most comfortable of nights. [you will have.] But in medical school [or any other endeavor worth pursuing,] “you gotta do what you gotta do.” You can’t do it in your apartment because you will end up falling asleep or watching infomercials till you’re broke. Therefore, the only safe and sure place is the medical school library. With some provisions and following these tips, you will be able to survive your camp-out at the library. Here are some things you will need (feel free to improvise): 1. Hoodie Flickr | davharuk 2. Starbucks Double Shot Espresso (Low Sugar) Flickr | Sammy Zimmermanns 3. Water Bottle (500mL) Flickr | Djenan Kozic 4. 5-Hour Energy Flickr | Mike Mozart 5. Some Snacks (Crackers, Cheese, Banana, Apple, etc.) Flickr | Laurel F And for the hard core and gunners: 1. Ground Up Coffee Flickr | epSos .de 2. Tabasco Sauce and Hand Sanitizer Flickr | sacks08 Flickr | Mr.TinDC You arrive. It’s 10 pm! You don’t know where your children are but you certainly know where you are: the library. You’re pumped, adrenaline is running and you are going to ace that exam. Three hours pass without any problem. You think, wow, cortisol and catecholamines really… are… amazing… But then it quickly creeps to be 2am and you are feeling pretty tired. Now is the time to eat that banana and chug the double shot. This should buy you an hour or two. You are plugging away and memorizing the PALS, distinguishing between tissues and recognizing different types of cells. But then 3 o’clock rolls around and you decide that this is the POINT OF NO RETURN. You feel like giving up but the Rocky inside of you somehow musters up the courage and says, “Please, I got into medical school, I can do this.” And you say it’s only a couple of more hours before the sun comes up. I can do it! After going back and forth for what seems like 30 minutes, you realize you have just wasted an hour. The angel and devil on your shoulders are fighting. This is the time to drink that 5-hour energy, stop hallucinating and truck on. This should last you like the bottle advertises: five hours. At 7am, go home and take a cold shower. Make it to your class before 8am. The anxiety of seeing the classroom and your fellow classmates will give you the second wind you need to finish the job and get the heck home. And for the hard core and gunners; one of these or both will surely give you the extra kick you require. You can either take a wad of ground coffee and stick it in-between your gums (it’s like ‘dipping’ but without the cancer risk as the steady diffusion of caffeine will give you the jolt you need.) or you can go out right crazy by putting a drop of tabasco sauce in each eye. source
