You are here
Cram Artists

Baron and Huiskamp say their 24-hour cram session, Noon to Noon, is an academic necessity, a commentary on higher education’s norms, and an exhibition of the absurdities of our society at large. Photos by Patrick Montero.
Details
With Noon to Noon, seniors Emmett Huiskamp and Ellie Baron turn finals week into a performance art piece.
Every semester as finals loom, students across the country turn to caffeine and sheer will to power themselves into — and through — the small hours as they squeeze in as much reading and studying as possible. An affront to the physician-recommended eight hours of sleep, the all-nighter, for better or worse, is a quintessential college experience.
Since their sophomore year, Ellie Baron ’25 and Emmett Huiskamp ’25 regularly decamped to the Dining Center’s basement to complete their finals in a 24-hour period. They say their tradition, which eventually gained the title Noon to Noon, is an academic necessity, a commentary on higher education’s norms, and an exhibition of the absurdities of our society at large.
“As a sociology major, I have a lot of critiques about the way we treat work and treat our bodies in this society,” Baron says. “In many ways, [Noon to Noon] is a critique of the system we’re in and a society that requires us to put our well-being on hold to get massive amounts of work done.”
What began as a dare two years ago, Baron says, evolved into a piece of performance art through funding from the John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities. In mid-December, as the fall semester wound down, Baron and Huiskamp moved Noon to Noon to VCAM, livestreaming their 24-hour cram session on YouTube and inviting students across campus to join them in solidarity or tune in over the internet.

“People would come by to work with us for an hour at a time,” Huiskamp, an English and fine arts double major, recalls of their early days in the Dining Center. “But it was really just Ellie and I, for at least the bulk of the time, in the basement, slowly going insane.”
This year, between noon Dec. 17 and noon the following day, the duo welcomed nearly 30 fellow Fords to VCAM’s media production and object study space for anywhere between 30 minutes to 22 hours to complete their work in solidarity. They marked the passage of time with hourly group selfies taken with a modern instant camera and a running list of completed finals. Huiskamp, who opted for a dapper suit and freshly shined shoes, became a canvas for time as he became increasingly rumpled throughout the night and added a pithy sticker to his shirt every time he completed a final.
“This iteration was really fun because we got to see so many of our friends through it all,” Baron says, noting that they even received encouragement from Huiskamp’s high school friends who tuned into the livestream. “It almost felt like people thought we were running a marathon, and they were there to say, ‘You can do it!’”
Among the Fords joining them was Amelia LaMotte ’25, who, as a fellow English major, heard Huiskamp talk about his Noon to Noon experiences in their junior seminar. LaMotte arrived at 6 p.m. expecting to stay for just a few hours but remained through the night. In that time, she says, she completed her most pressing matter: the annotated bibliography for her thesis focused on the archive of Phillis Wheatley, widely considered the first Black author of a published book of poetry.
LaMotte, who struggles with bouts of insomnia, is no stranger to sleepless nights and says she was bolstered by the sense of camaraderie among those also laboring through the night. “I now feel very close to everyone that was in the room with me, especially during the final hours,” LaMotte says, attributing that feeling to the “self-inflicted suffering” they all chose to endure.
That suffering was alleviated, in part, by the ample snacks the Hurford Center funding provided, including the mother of all-nighter foods, chicken-flavored Top Ramen. Baron says she admires Huiskamp’s commitment to discomfort by downing six packets of ramen throughout Noon to Noon, especially since he’s an “excellent cook.”
“I will eat Ramen in my day-to-day life, but it definitely plunges you into a certain feeling,” Huiskamp says. “It doesn't feel good to eat.”