The clock strikes midnight, and you stare with tired eyes at the towering stack of papers before you. Unfortunately, you have a good six hours of intense reading ahead of you to make up for an entire semester of, well, slacking off. Eyeing your bottle of Vivarin, you decide to take three pills, along with a cup of coffee. You figure this will pretty much guarantee you'll make it through the night without having to waste any precious study time on sleep.
Many students resort to the use of legal drugs during finals week in order to stay awake.
Often final papers and projects are put off until the very last minute. When stress kicks in, sometimes drinking large amounts of coffee or taking caffeine pills seems to be the only solution. Many students find the effects of caffeine pleasant and the coffee shop atmosphere conducive to studying. Zeiders does not recommend that students drink large amounts of caffeine in order to stay awake to study. She describes caffeine as being an unnecessary stimulant that will rev up the body's engine for a short time but will inevitably lower the blood sugar and amount of fluid going to the brain.