by Jamie Blough

Editor-in-Chief

We’ve all been there; whether it’s because you chugged a quad-shot latte at 7 PM, or accidentally took a three hour nap in the middle of the day and consequently slept through your much needed AP Stats tutoring session, there’s no doubt you’ve fallen victim to a colossally messed up sleep schedule at some point in high school. Most nights when I find myself wide awake at 2 AM, I prefer to wallow in my anxieties about my impending college decisions or cry for absolutely no reason at all. Recently, however, my life has been going fairly well, meaning I’ve had to find new ways to occupy my restless brain in the middle of the night. With that, I’ve compiled a list of things I have done during the peak of my caffeine buzz at 2 o’clock in the morning.

Learned the “Mii” theme song on piano: I’m actually incredibly proud of myself for this one. I sat down at the piano at midnight with absolutely no regard for the tenants in the room two doors down from mine and banged on random keys until I found the chords that sounded fairly correct. After an hour of replaying the song over and over again – boy am I excited to see what my Spotify 2020 wrapped looks like next year – and trying to replicate the melody from memory, I perfected the iconic number, and proceeded to play it 30 times over because it was 2 AM. If you can’t tell already, anything goes at 2 AM. This tremendous feat was obviously just the beginning of my dignified career as a pianist; see you all when I perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 at the Senior Talent Show!

Accidentally broke my entire refrigerator: Picture this: you tip-toe into your kitchen at 1 AM on a mission. You microwave your parents’ Aldo’s leftovers, brew some “Nighty-Night” tea (although we all know chamomile is no match for the four Yerba Mates you drank at lunchtime), pour yourself a bowl of whatever random off-brand cereal you’ve had sitting in the back of your pantry for a month, and grab a jar of pickles for good measure. As you attempt to balance your first meal of the day, your laptop that is playing episodes of The Office that you’ve already seen but just leave on in the background so you feel less lonely, and your phone in one hand, you reach to the top shelf of your refrigerator to pour yourself a glass of water. Big mistake. The giant glass bottles of water that your mom insists on using to complete the modern aesthetic all come crashing down. The bottles shatter. The middle shelf of your fridge shatters. Condiments are everywhere. Babies are crying. Obama is there. He tells you he’s disappointed in you. You understand. You’re disappointed in you too. You convince yourself it was all a fever dream and take your food back to your room. You wake up the next morning to the sound of your parents calling the police about a “break-in” but you just go along with it because the sound of your stomach crying for help after your 2 AM mukbang is louder. You regret everything. 

Actually did my homework: I had tried every method I thought possible to fall asleep, yet nothing was working. I scrolled through Netflix for half an hour looking for something to watch, and still nothing appealed to me. I watched every Pete Davidson SNL skit I could find. Not even TikTok could entertain me at this point. I finally succumbed to the system, sat down at my desk, and completed my APES reading guide on time. Crazy. I can barely call myself a Second Semester Senior after this one. This is by far the most unorthodox thing I’ve done in the middle of the night.