For students, all-nighters are a way to study; for Assistant Professor of Psychology Pamela Thacher, all-nighters are what she studies. She recently had a paper accepted for publication which, she says, “Establishes some preliminary data that pulling all-nighters is associated with lower GPAs (although for a few students this is not true).”

Another paper investigates the relationship of all-nighters to procrastination. “Surprisingly, there is no obvious relationship,” she says. “For most students, an all-nighter is too painful to do very often, and procrastination appears to be happening on a near constant basis!” Her current research looks at frequent users of all-nighters to determine “the effects on their academic performance and on how healthy they are, and how they sustain this practice.”

One important recent achievement of which Professor Thacher is justifiably proud is her performance as a "guest coach" for the SLU football team during their 2006 game against Johns Hopkins, which St. Lawrence won in the final seconds. “Coach Chris Phelps ’91 refused to let me call any plays for some reason, but I think my presence on the sidelines probably was the really important factor there,” she claims, tongue in cheek.

One of Thacker’s courses is Clinical Psychology, which has a community-based learning component. “This has been unbelievably rewarding both for me and for the students,” she says. “This kind of learning is transformative and I am so proud of this class and of their work.”

It is her students that Thacker most enjoys about her work. “They amaze me,” she says. “They make me laugh every day. I love their energy. Sometimes they make me crazy but usually they just make me happy to be a professor.”  

Other things that make her happy are her family, which includes three sons, and “lip-synching to Faith Hill songs while holding a fake microphone when I'm alone in my lab.”