I’m in finals right now.

Normally, I’ve got a lot of self-righteous pre-yuppie disdain for all things sugary. While I may, in fact, have consumed multiple liters of Mountain Dew per week when I started college. I fell off the wagon when I saw Super Size Me and realized just how many pounds of sugar I was ingesting (really - go ahead and mock me) and switched mostly to coffee (which I take black because I prefer it that way — even coffee with sugar has quite a lot less sugar than soda).

But I’ve been drinking coffee with every meal for the last week or something; it’s about to burn a hole in my stomach.

So I did what anybody desperate to stay sharp but without the money to start a cocaine habit would do. I went to the campus convenience store and bought a really big can of Red Bull (I thought they came in only one size!). Then I drank it in like five minutes.

For the record? 220 calories in 16 ounces. So the same as soda. Sucrose instead of HFCS, if you care. It’s not exactly good for you.

But that stuff gives you wings.

Time for my obligatory controversial statement: While I definitely don’t know much about human physiology, I could swear that that stuff works better than coffee. It makes me less jittery, but still makes me want to sail across the Charles River under the cover of darkness and claim the Prudential Building for God and the Queen (note: while you absolutely should click on that link, there is a single audio usage of the ‘F’ word. Just a heads up). Is is the magical blend of amino acids or the placebo effect? It’s hard to say. Anything banned in Denmark has to have something going for it, though.

After consuming that monster can of Red Bull, I spent three hours working on a single problem on a take-home final, cleaned my desk, realized that I had been using the wrong boundary conditions, rewrote the offending part of the routine I was using, and still didn’t get an answer that made any physical sense.

Then I fought a grizzly bear. With my fists (more slight impoliteness. But seriously, if you don’t laugh at this you’re old. Or less stupid than me).

I can’t afford to drink Red Bull every day, and it probably wouldn’t even be the smartest idea to get into the habit of drinking it every week (after all, I wouldn’t want to build up a resistance to placebo). But it’s good to know that it’ll be there for me.

Almost as good as it is to know that classes will be over soon.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 17th, 2008 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Random.