Ellie Mirman's Startup Marketing Blog

Late Night Cramming

Posted by Ellie Mirman

Nov 21, 2008

I would have thought that my late night cramming days were behind me. That I wouldn't be typing typing away in the beautiful silence that only comes with a completely sound asleep household - er - apartment building. But here I am, just finishing a presentation I'll deliver in 10 hours to a few thousand people. And now cutting into my precious beauty sleep to reminisce about my college days.

Oddly enough, I've been thinking a lot about dorm life tonight.

Out of my whole first year, or even out of all my four years at university, for some reason there's one late night cramming session that I always remember. It was sometime first semester of my first year, and I was taking Philosophy 101 (just like every other going-to-save-the-world-someday-with-my-altruism college undergrad). I had a paper on who-knows-what due the next day and, well, it was already the middle of the night, just about 9 hours before the paper was due. Hey, 9 hours is plenty (if I don't have to sleep...). I had taken my laptop out into the hallway of my dorm because it was so wonderfully quiet, and oddly comfortable. It was so peaceful (perhaps producing the right state of mind to write about philosophy...) with everyone asleep in their rooms, except me, typing away in the hallway, and my roommate the night-owl, settling into our room after a night out on the town.

There's not much more to that memory, oddly enough, except perhaps thinking that my most productive time of day was 3am, and also the feeling that I was genuinely happy. That must be it. The reason I always remember that moment - that feeling of pure happiness. Feels pretty sad right about now.

There were a lot of things that really made me happy in my dorm life days. The friends, the independence, the sense of (productivity? no, purpose sounds better though cheesy). Not to say those other things are gone. I continue to have wonderful friends (many from those same late night cram sessions), live even more independently, and, fortunately, continue to feel productive - er - purposeful? But there is still something more to the calm happiness of my late night cram session... perhaps it was due to living in a building of 600 others just like me. Or perhaps it is just due to having too much caffeine and staying up typing through the dead of night.

Topics: university, happiness

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