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The three of us would stay up all night, just talking away. We were like a bunch of high school girls at their first sleepover.

Only we weren’t your typical high school girls. That’s because we were college men.

The great irony of our first year here was our profession that we just loved sleep. Irony is we didn’t get any of it – and we were getting tired of it.

So one day while my roommate was clipping his nails into his desk drawer, which doubled as his trash can, I had what by all appearances was a brilliant idea.

I decided that our sleeping patterns were somewhat less than efficient. We would stay up until 4 or 5 a.m. talking, be exhausted for class at 8 a.m., then not get anything done the entire day because we always seemed to choose people over books.

I decided that our sleeping patterns had to change. It was for the best, after all.

We would sleep during the day and work at night. This idea in our sleep-deprived minds seemed perfectly logical at the time.

We would go to sleep around 4 p.m. or whenever our classes were finished for the day. The recommended daily amount of sleep, eight hours, takes us to midnight. We would wake up well rested and waltz down to Puzzles Eatery to have our breakfast before the 2 a.m. closing time.

Following that healthy, deep-fried meal to kick off our day, the only friends still awake would be ourselves and our books. This way, deep through the night, we would be forced to do our studying, thus magically acquiring a 4.0 GPA.

Lunch would be a tad late – at 7 a.m. when the residential restaurants open. Grab an omelette and some of that mush that replaces the other two soups at what they like to call breakfast.

Then classes would start – and this is the key. If you go to class in the morning after a long night (a high school girls’ sleepover, perhaps) you instead get your sleep in stadium-style seating with a comfortable lullaby spoken in monotone by your professor.

But, if you go to class at night, you can stay awake and learn, once again magically conjuring that 4.0. As we couldn’t move the classes to the night, we’d simply move night to the classes. Easy.

I decided I don’t need magic to get good grades on that online report card – I just need a clever sleeping pattern.

But what about time to socialize with our floormates and go out partying? What about our circadian rhythms? Big words and crazy science didn’t scare us. We subscribed to the policy of “it’s so crazy – it just might work.”

But it just might didn’t.

You have to give us credit for trying, though. After a night when two-thirds of our room pulled all-nighters, we decided to put our plan into action.

All right, maybe the term “action” is a little misleading. It was rather lacking in special effects or fireworks or an enchanting soundtrack. But, for three days or so, it happened.

Until I ruined it. I had to work – for this very newspaper, no less – from about 4 to 10 p.m. two nights a week. That’s like staying up six hours past your bed time. And I got cranky.

I jumped off the bandwagon. I became my own man, sleeping when I chose. This threw my roommates off that dangerous, careening wagon, too, and we realized everything that was exceptionally bad about my brilliant idea.

We had no social lives, except for a cheerfully dysfunctional relationship among us three. We still couldn’t stay awake during class, and our professors were still monotone. And our circadian rhythms were painfully out of tune.

So, a warning from one who has been down that road and come back alive – don’t walk it. Don’t crawl it, tip-toe it, waltz it, or shimmy it. Don’t go.

We love sleep. We all do. So go ahead and live the feeling. I joked before about eight hours of sleep a night, but by the end of the year I was getting eight hours on a regular basis. Never saw that one coming.

Of course there are times when there are more important things to do. Studying, sleepovers, even waxing your eyebrows can sometimes edge out sleep.

But try to edge sleep back in when you get the chance. There will always be monotone professors. There will always be late-night parties. There will always be staying up for no reason. Such are the perks of college.

Stay awake for them. Or compromise and catch half your lecture.

Above all, don’t be afraid to be high school girls. They know how to have fun. And sometimes they sleep.

Schenck is an assistant Viewpoint editor. E-mail him at jschenck@media.ucla.edu if you want to stay up late and paint his nails.