Last week, I had a research paper due. It was the culmination of a semester’s worth of work and while I had done a lot of preparation, the project seemed endless. I had three days to produce a brilliant, scholarly work of art. I needed to descend into the dungeons of the library, listen to dull elevator music and immerse myself in the minutia of MLA format.

Instead, I stayed up until 5:30 a.m. watching Netflix. I wrote my paper going off of one hour of sleep and approximately three gallons of coffee. My hands shook as I filled the blank page with jumbled sentences, amazed with the utter magnificence of my writing.

I waited for the crash but it didn’t come so I did the same thing the next night, depriving myself of sleep in the name of addictive television and the adrenaline rush that comes from doing something stupid.

When I reviewed my work on Thursday (the day before the paper was due) and I panicked. It was gibberish, the mindless ramblings of a child who had yet to grasp the concepts of grammar and sentence structure. And finally, at long last, desperation set in. I descended into the depths of the library, where silence is a way of life and the people do not acknowledge each other, and I became one with my paper.

I was unaware of the passage of time. All that mattered was the cursor on the screen and the word count I checked after every sentence as I inched closer to my goal. Rome was not built in a day, but my research paper was and it was a work of art.

I emerged from the library a different person, the sunlight felt strange on my skin and I was unsure how to communicate with the locals. The paper was done; my educational future was intact. It was time for more Netflix.

The moral of this story is that Netflix bingeing is necessary for academic success. Only when wholly panicked can great work be produced. The best way to reach this level of panic is to waste hours watching scandalous TV shows when you should be studying and becoming a reasonable adult. It’s not really a binge, it’s a way of life.