It’s 10 p.m., and I am starving. I just woke up from a two-hour nap, and I need to eat before I start studying for tomorrow’s noon chemistry exam.
My fridge is foodless. My stomach is starving and so is my savage mind that is ready to study right now. But there is nowhere on campus where you can buy food except Burger King.
The only other option is to go off campus, which is inconvenient because they don’t accept my Flex dollars or Moneymate at Papa John’s or any other place actually. I am forced to eat a Double Whopper, which seemed to deter my studying because all the fats blocked the passage of blood to the brain. Whose mistake is that?
For a college student, all nighters are a rite of passage, a necessity to survive when tests, quizzes and OWL homework come hunting for you.
Dr. Mary A. Carskadon studied sleep patterns of college students for years at Brown University School of Medicine. She said college students usually take naps from 10 p.m. to midnight, and then they are working, typing on their laptops, reading through the US history book and plugging pi over x on their calculators. They can’t then fall back asleep during what most other people consider nighttime.
But Mississippi State is not supportive of students staying up late at night. Perry and other places that serve “real food” close at 9 p.m., but they start packing up the food long before that. All other eateries on campus close around 7 p.m., while a few of them close at noon.
After approximately 8 p.m., you definitely are going to starve all night, except if you take precautions and have supplies of macaroni and cheese in your room and know how to cook it. It might sound simple, but how many students fail to prepare decent macaroni and cheese?
So macaroni and cheese is not, and should not, be the alternative. The solution is to have more places on campus open late at night. Perry and other places serving “real food” should stay open until midnight. And the new pizza place in Griffis needs to start operation fast.
Wouldn’t all students benefit then? Doing so would mean more comfortable studying for students and a better active night where students can hang out at eateries and review for tests together, as everyone is awake long after 9 p.m. for sure, but where are they?
The Drill Field is empty except for three boys playing Frisbee. Perry’s just closed its doors. The Union is starting its evacuation. The lights just went off at the pavilion in Aiken Village. The bicycle racks around the dorm rooms are packed.
I got back to my dorm expecting to see everyone in their bed sleeping, getting ready to wake up early in the morning. But when I swiped my card and walked through the door, there was life again before me. Two people were watching “Family Guy” on Fox, and another group of five surrounded a table working on some physics homework.
A few others were dispersed around the lounge typing on their laptops or reading their books. The computer lab was packed with students checking their e-mails and chatting on Facebook, while a few others were finishing their online OWL homework. Apparently, everyone was still awake.
But everyone, even those whose stomachs are full, does not dare to go out because it’s so dark – especially girls – as the whole campus is just dark and empty.
In its effort to help against crimes including rape, MSU has installed emergency phones around campus, which is great, but a better solution is to have the campus better lit. When you walk around campus after sunset, you are walking blind. Light poles are scarce. The only places well lit at night on campus are the tennis courts.
The Drill Field, however, is in complete darkness after sunset. If we have a well-illuminated campus, then people would be able to hang outside their dorms, thus creating a more secure environment. Mississippi State is a ghost town after sunset, and that needs to improve.
MSU students don’t go to bed early. The university turns off the lights and sends students to their rooms, but then everyone stays awake to hang out with friends they missed all day because of classes, to finish that English paper that is due tomorrow or to study calculus for the noon exam tomorrow. Six a.m. is the time when a student goes to bed, not when they wake up.
So if MSU would give us more support, then we could study better at night and score better, satisfying our savage minds and stomachs and achieving better overall ratings MSU needs to stay up late.
Abdallah Abu Ghazaleh is a freshman majoring in electrical engineering. He can be contacted at [email protected].