I looked up from my computer. Decorating the table in front of me were two cans of Pomegranate Juiced Rockstar, a bag of almonds, a can of coke, a wad of crumpled napkins, a half-eaten blondie, a Red Bull, a chocolate bar. A bag of pretzels, a bag of walnuts, three half-empty bottles of water, lip balm, an apple, a bag of rice cakes stolen from Val, cereal stolen from Val, an orange stolen from Val. The Schwemms cup my friends and I used to mix together different drinks to make interesting caffeinated concoctions. The water filter we scrounged from the library refrigerator. The eyeliner pencil we used to draw fake moles on ourselves. A Monster lined up next to a Starbucks’ Frappacino and a post-it on each: one read “11/12 PM” and the other “5/6 AM”. A frisbee nestled among the pile of bags and clothes on the floor. Three 647-page multiliths strewn, well, everywhere.

“I wish I was Princess Lea,” I thought to myself. “Then I wouldn’t have to be here.” At that point, I had been in the science library for five hours. It was only noon. After spending 27 hours in that same library, at that same desk trashed with all conceivable amenities, my thoughts had strayed much closer to insanity than a Princess Lea fantasy. Here is my story.

7 AM was late. My friend Jacob had arrived at 6 and my roommate soon after. They had lined up several desks against the window so we could look out over the lawn next to Keefe. Which we did, all day and all night long, as we sat working on the same paper: 12 pages on why there was no peace in the Middle East. “If they knew why ‘all attempts at a two-state solution had failed,’” I thought to myself, “wouldn’t they have come farther by now? And who were ‘they’?” I needed to figure these things out, but I had a few hours until 4 PM, when it was due.

In the early afternoon, I started to feel claustrophobic. “I can’t sit here anymore,” I said to my roommate. “I just can’t do it.” A friend of mine called to say he was leaving and wanted to say goodbye. “Should I come by Pratt?” I asked, desperately wanting to escape the library, but not knowing if my body would let me leave my seat. “No, no, I’ll come to you,” he said. He drove up and I met him at his car. It was to be my first journey into the outside world. We talked, we hugged, he left. I slowly made my way back to my sad, pathetic life in the library and realized how much I’d rather be outside with him. I sat down at my desk and opened my phone: “Don’t leave! Come back!” I wrote. A minute later my phone buzzed and the people around me gave me dirty looks – they were trying to concentrate. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he wrote. I fluttered with excitement. In my hermitage, I had gone insane and actually thought he might be serious. “Really?! :)” “Uhh…no.” I snapped back to reality.

We kept working. 4 PM came and went. I took the deadline as more of a suggestion than a hard and fast rule. We kept working.

When the clock struck 6 PM, we decided it was time to eat. We needed to brave the outdoors and venture to Val. Not to sit down, not to spend time there, just to grab something and return to our doom. As I was leaving the cafeteria, I heard my name being called. “How’d the paper go?” asked someone in my class. I gave him a strange look. “You finished??” I said, confused. “Yeah, didn’t you?!” I just walked away. Back to the library.

Knowing it would be a long night, I stopped in Schwemms to pick up an energy drink. Since I don’t drink coffee and rarely drink soda, energy drinks were totally out of my range of knowledge. I called a few people to see what I should get, but everyone had a different opinion. What the hell, I thought, I’ll just buy them all. Except for Full Throttle. If the title didn’t do it, the motto of “Let Your Man Out” made it sound like some weird porno.

Soon, darkness set in. We could no longer distract ourselves by creepily watching the people who passed by outside. We found other ways. I’ve been asked not to go into them.

We made a pact – no one was leaving until everyone finished. I knew I would probably finish first – I started first, and even though I tried to tell them it wasn’t true, I had a lot more down on paper than either of my friends. I made the pact anyway. If any of us were going to get out of this alive, we needed to stick together.

Midnight came and went. There were about eight of us who were there for the long haul. I noticed a friend of mine was bleeding on both his foot and his leg. “What happened?!” I asked him. “My paper is a beast in bed,” he said. We both knew he had too much to do to even think about cleaning off or wrapping up his scrapes, so I didn’t bother suggesting it, even though it looked like his toe was falling off. Details, details. That phrase would come up a lot that night.

At 4 AM my roommate cracked. She had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown for some time. One eye was bright red and bulging out of her face. She had lost all hand eye coordination and begun to wobble. “You don’t understand. I’m drunk. I’m actually drunk.” She had consumed zero alcohol. I think it was the Rockstar. She thought it was the stress of having four papers due that day and only finishing three of them, or the two hours of sleep she had gotten over the past three days. I tried to convince her to stay – she had to, I thought. If she left now, she might never make it. And what about the pact?! She sat back down at her computer with a fanatical look of determination in her eyes. “Ten minutes,” she said. “I’ll try it for ten minutes.” I started to feel bad… “No roomie, it’s okay. Take a nap for a little while.” “TEN MINUTES!” she barked at me. “TEN MINUTES!” She soon hit her breaking point and left.

I pulled a couch into the stacks and dozed off for a little while. When my phone’s alarm went off I got up and wandered around the library. I ran into someone from my class and asked him what his thesis was. “Whenever anyone tries to make any progress,” he said, “they get shot.” I thought for a second. Yup, that pretty much summed it up.

People started to smell funky. We played around with the idea of washing off in the emergency chemistry lab showers. Then we actually started to consider it. “Nice hair,” I said to a friend of mine sporting a mohawk. “How does it stay up?” “Oh,” he said to me, “It’s just dirty.”

The sun rose and we were still writing. Val opened whenever it opens and people starting making food runs. Anyone who ventured out asked everyone, even people they didn’t know, if they wanted anything. We felt each other’s pain. I’ll take a banana.

My roommate returned. It was daylight again, and we watched as people walked by victoriously, holding papers, presumably going to turn them in. I hated them, those people with the smug faces. A friend of ours came up to our table smiling. She was nice, I liked her. “I’m done!” she said happily. What a bitch, I hated her. “You are now the enemy,” I said. “I can’t look at you. Please, just go.”

Around 11 AM, I printed out my own paper. I didn’t want to tell anyone, I didn’t want to cross over onto enemy lines. I wanted to stay until my friends were finished too, but they insisted I go turn it in. I think they just wanted me to leave so I could get them some food.

Part of me was scared – I had forgotten what life was like on the outside. I wandered around in a daze, past Chapin, past Val, past Converse. Somehow I made it to my teacher’s office in Morgan Hall… “So what are you doing this summer?” he said. “Sleeping,” I thought to myself. “Oh, so do you want to go to law school?” “No, I want to sleep,” I thought. “Why is he asking me all these questions?!”

After a long, arduous conversation with my teacher on my life goals in which I probably made very little sense, I left. I roamed around, not really knowing where to go or what to do. My feet took me into Converse, peering into offices and classrooms. I found a bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. I stared up at myself in the mirror – I looked like death.

I found myself in the President’s Office in my slippers, my hair more of a mess than usual and my general being only to be characterized by total and complete griminess. “Is Professor Marx here?” I asked his secretary. “Are you okay?” she responded.

He wasn’t in, so I didn’t get to say what I wanted to:

“Look at me. LOOK AT ME! This is why we need a reading period.”