Grips and Grades

Do you remember the first time you ever stayed up all night, or pulled an all-nighter in college?

My first time was at Steve Bjerklie's home in Mill Valley. It was my senior year in high school and we somehow managed to talk through the night, mostly about the girls that got away. As the sun came up, I felt giddy that we had cheated the Sandman, but also felt cheated out of something valuable at the same time. I made it through the next day before crashing heavily at about 8pm.

I can't even contemplate pulling an all-night at my age. I get by with seven hours sleep, barely. Even still, the deficit slowly builds up over several days. I know that, sooner or later, I will have to pay back all those stolen hours. Today is one of those days, but Saturday is still three nights away. In between, I have full days of work, final dress rehearsals for Pirates of Penzance, and opening night. Then I can sleep in for a bit, before cleaning the house for our big Halloween party on Sunday. That may be the difference from when I was a teenager - I don't really get to relax on the weekends.

That wasn't the case back in high school, when our TV production class was invited to help out at KQED's annual fund-raising auction. We somehow garnered the exciting gig of camera grips, which is somewhat less glamorous than it sounds. As grips, we trailed along behind the big TV cameras on their rolling tripods and made sure the thick cables didn't get tangled as the cameramen moved from auction table to auction table. There was a fair amount of standing around involved, punctuated by moments of panic as the camera took off for the next set-up. But hanging out together and being part of the the show was the payoff. That, and all the perks.

This may not sound like much, but they did bring in food each night. Since we started at about 7pm, we were pretty hungry by our first break at nine. We feasted on pizza, McDonald's, Burger King, whatever. The teenage male palate is never particularly refined, and as the evening wore on, we were prepared to down anything that remotely resembled food. On our breaks, we could wander around the Cow Palace to check out upcoming auction tables and even operate the phone banks.

We also learned Public Television's deepest and darkest secret. You know those telephone sounds that ring constantly during the auction? Pre-recorded. I know. Shocking. At first we were puzzled that, in the wee hours of the morning, no one could be seen to be picking up phones. But then we put two and two together - and arrived at the obvious.

Our innocence gone forever, we worked far into the night, often quitting only at 2 am, when the auction finally shut down. Still abuzz with caffeine and cola, we took off for the long drive back to Mill Valley on a practically empty Highway 101.

The first weekend passed normally. But after Friday night on the second, I came home and crashed as never before. I awoke to what I assumed was the dawn, only to realize that I had slept clear through the day until six that evening. I got dressed and hopped in my mother's '68 Camaro to head back to the City for another shift. The following day I was fine - I had caught up.

The very last time I had pulled an all-nighter was my final quarter at UC Davis, in 1977. I had an insane schedule, with 10 separate classes. I used to thrive on keeping uber-busy, but since I had classes that overlapped, something had to give.

One night, I finished tutoring French at 10 pm and then dropped off to a well-earned sleep. But something wouldn't let me go all the way under. I tossed and turned for an hour or so and then decided I needed to go over my class schedules. That's when I came really wide awake: The mid-term for my 6-unit Embryology Course was the following morning. Fifty-percent of my grade - and I hadn't been to class in over a month.

My absence wasn't due to slacking, it was because the on-campus SCUBA diving course, for which I was the T.A., ran from 7 to 8am. In theory, I could have made it to Embryology at eight, but I usually had to stay under a hot shower for thirty minutes just to get my body temperature back to normal. Fortunately, I had subscribed to the student-run note-taking service, Classical Notes. Even more fortunately, I had picked up my backlog of notes that very morning, so I had a chance. I started studying, despite my drooping eyelids.

An hour later, I set the alarm for a half-hour rest-period and woke up thirty minutes later to repeat the process, which I would do all through the night. You know that recurring nightmare where you have forgotten all semester to go to a certain class? I was living it.

The next morning, I dragged my still-warm corpse to the mid-term and managed to get a D+, which was a huge relief. At least I was still in the game. I spent the last month of the quarter studying Embryology during every free second (of which there were not many) and chose to even sacrifice a solid A in Invertebrate Zoology to study for my other big final. It wasn't just my GPA that was at stake, it was my degree. I had already taken so many extra classes that I had exceeded my allotted units. If I didn't pass both classes, I wouldn't be allowed to enroll for another quarter and wouldn't be receiving my Zoology degree.

I succeeded, but only just, earning "gentleman" C's in both huge science courses, providing a somewhat ignominious end to my college career. Thirty-three years later, of course, it's all water under the bridge, and I never really did anything with that degree anyway. But I sometimes wonder what made me wake up that one night before my mid-term, when it hadn't been on my mind at all for weeks?

Maybe I'll find out someday. In the meantime, whoever or whatever you are, I owe you one.