Helen ZhangI could lie to you and tell you that I’m productive at normal human hours, but I won’t. No, my internal clock doesn’t get up and at ’em until about midnight, and by then everyone else is sleeping.
This has always been a blockade for me when it comes to studying or working: if my brain wants me to be awake during these hours, do I just deal with the crippling exhaustion the next day? Do I take sleeping pills in a desperate attempt to mediate the contrast between when I want to be awake, and when I should?
While there’s no good solution to my tendency to be a night owl, there is a solution to my preferred working hours: the Students’ Union Building.
SUB is where I work, so I spend a lot of time there. Eventually, after spending many early morning hours in the building, I realized that it simply never closed. While the upper floors are inaccessible late at night, the main floor and basement are always open, at least while school is in session.
The prospect of a 24-hour building on campus at all, let alone a comfortable study space like SUB, is incredible. It means that students like me, who probably should’ve been born bats, have a place on campus they can go and actually get work done in peace. I do my studying, homework, and work almost entirely at night now, and I don’t have to worry about my body associating my desk at home with stress.
While I can’t speak for everyone, the hours of SUB are a godsend for me. It’s quiet, calm, and most importantly, dark. There’s no one in the building but you, the cleaning staff (who are all so nice), and the occasional fellow night owl, who will leave you alone regardless.
SUB being open 24 hours a day is amazing, not just for people like me, who only wake when everyone else goes to sleep, but also for people like you, who participate in society. You don’t have to deal with my sleepy mood swings, and I can bask in an empty building at two in the morning like the antisocial vampire I was born to be. It’s a win-win.
