Hi. It's Sam. I'm very tired.

I do the 2-to-4 a.m. show at my college's radio station. I'm not going to say which college or which station, because the program director has a computer and knows how to use it, and also because if you're in range you already know, and if you're not, it doesn't matter. On the air I'm "DJ Static." Off the air I'm Sam, junior, undeclared, and I have a 9 a.m. class on Wednesdays that I have attended, in total, four times.

This page is for the three people who listen and the several more who've asked me "what is it you actually DO in there at two in the morning." Here is what I actually do in there at two in the morning.

1:45 a.m. I let myself in with the key code. The DJ before me (the midnight-to-2 guy, who does something with a lot of distortion pedals) is usually already packed up and standing by the door like a dog that needs to go out. We nod. There's a tradition of not talking.

1:55 a.m. I look at the log. There are actually two logs and a binder. The program log is a printout for the day with everything that's supposed to air at a specific time: the station ID at the top of the hour, the public service announcements, the underwriting spots ("this hour is made possible in part by..."), and blank lines where I write what I played. The transmitter log is where you go look at the meters on the rack in the hallway and write down the readings at the times it says. If a number is wrong you call the engineer, who is asleep, and who has never once been happy to hear from me. The binder is the "operator's notebook": notes from the PD, a list of stuff we can't play, and the sheet for the EAS (Emergency Alert System) tests, which come in over the box with the red light, and when the red light comes on you do what the sheet says and you write it down. The sheet is very clear. The box is very loud.

The carts. Everything short and official lives on carts: those plastic cartridges that look like an 8-track went to college. Station IDs, PSAs, the underwriting spots, the "you're listening to" sweepers. You shove one in the cart machine, hit the button, it plays, and when it's done it re-cues itself to the start with a little clunk. There's a rack of them labeled in five different people's handwriting. My favorite is one labeled "LEGAL ID (GOOD ONE)". There is also a cart labeled "LEGAL ID (BAD ONE)" and no one knows why we keep it.

2:00 a.m. Top of the hour, you play the legal ID: the call letters and the city of license, said clearly, as close to the top of the hour as you can get it without cutting off a song. Then the show starts. I say "It's two a.m., you're up, I'm up, let's not talk about it," and then I play something.

2:00 to 4:00. Two turntables, two CD players, one cassette deck that eats tapes, the cart machine, and a board with more knobs than I use. Cue the next record on headphones while the current one plays. Talk over the intro if you're feeling brave. Say the names of the last three songs you played every fifteen minutes or so, because someone always calls to ask. Fill out the log. Look at the meters at the times it says. Don't fall asleep. Don't fall asleep. Don't fall asleep.

3:00 a.m. Legal ID again. The sun is very far away.

3:58 a.m. The 4-to-6 person comes in. Sometimes. If nobody comes, there's a "dead air" policy that involves a very long CD and a note taped to the board, but I've only had to do that twice, and once was because the 4-to-6 person's car wouldn't start and she called the request line from a pay phone to say so, which I thought was decent of her.

I am not a lawyer. I am a person who was made to sit through a two-hour training in a room with no windows before they gave me the key code. But in general:

• Obscene stuff is never allowed. Not at 2 a.m., not ever. The FCC is a real government agency with real fines, and the station's license is the only reason the building exists.
• Indecent stuff (the famous list of words, and things in that neighborhood) is restricted during the hours when kids might be listening, and the FCC's late-night window is more lenient. HOWEVER, our station's policy is: we don't say those words on the air, period, at any hour. It's simpler, and if a song has them, you play the clean version or you don't play it. There's a list in the binder of records that have been checked. If it's not on the list, you listen to the whole thing on headphones first. Yes, even the eleven-minute one.
• The legal ID at the top of every hour. Call letters, city. Non-negotiable.
• Nobody can pay you to play something. If a band gives you a CD, that's fine. If a band gives you a CD and twenty dollars, that's payola and it's illegal and also, what am I going to do with twenty dollars at 3 a.m., the vending machine only takes quarters.
• Keep the logs. The logs are how the station proves it did what its license says. Somebody files them. Somebody, someday, might read them. Print clearly. Don't doodle.
• The EAS box. When it goes off, you follow the sheet. This is the one that actually matters.
• Station rules on top of the government rules: no eating over the board (the midnight guy spilled a whole soda into it in 1998 and we still talk about it), no more than two friends in the studio, sign in and out, put records back in the right sleeve, and rewind the cart machine cart. (It rewinds itself. This rule is a joke the engineer put on the wall. I think.)

Every DJ at the station has to follow the "clock": a certain number of picks per hour from the new-music bin (the stuff the music director marked with colored dots), and no more than a couple of songs per hour by the same artist. Inside the clock, it's up to you. Here's what the 2 a.m. clock sounds like:

2:00 to 2:30 is for people driving home. Waitresses, the guys who close the bars, the nurse (see below). Mid-tempo. Something with a beat but nothing that demands anything of you. Lo-fi indie stuff recorded on four-tracks, a little dub reggae, old soul singles from the library, the new-bin picks that have actual choruses.

2:30 to 3:15 is the deep end. This is why the slot exists. Long instrumentals. Ambient records that are one chord for nine minutes. The second side of jazz albums, where the band stopped trying to impress anybody. Post-rock that builds for six minutes and then either explodes or doesn't. Shoegaze, if it's raining. Field recordings, if I'm feeling insufferable. Songs in languages I don't speak. This is the block where I play the record the music director put a dot on and wrote "??" next to.

3:15 to 3:45 is for people getting UP. Bakers, the guys at the newspaper loading dock, the one cross-country runner. A little more energy. Twangy stuff. Surf instrumentals. Something from the 60s garage compilations that the station has forty of. Old country, and here is my rule: one country song per show, no exceptions, no explanations. People have asked. I will not explain.

3:45 to 4:00 is the landing. Something quiet and kind. Something with a piano. Something that ends and leaves a little silence in the room before the next legal ID. The last song of the night is the only one I pick before I get to the station. Everything else I make up as I go, based on the weather and the phone.

No song lists on this page. If you want to know what I played, be awake.

The request line is a beige phone with a light instead of a ringer, so it doesn't go over the air. On a big night it lights up maybe four times. Three of those are these people. I'm not using their real names and they don't use mine, so we're even.

The Night Nurse. Calls at 2:40, give or take five minutes, from the break room at the hospital on the hill. She has been calling since before I had the slot. She requests "something with a beat but not too much," every time, and if I ask what she means, she says "you know," and hangs up. The thing is, I do know. I keep a small stack of records on the far left of the counter that are, exactly, something with a beat but not too much. Once I played one before she called and she called anyway to say "that was it, thank you," and hung up. I think about that a lot.

Fiddle Guy. A truck driver, I think, based on the background noise, who calls from somewhere with a lot of wind and asks for "anything with a fiddle in it." This is the reason for the one-country-song rule. He doesn't always call. When he doesn't, I play the fiddle song anyway, in case he's out there past the edge of the signal, and just can't get to a phone.

What Time Is It. Calls, asks what time it is, says thank you, hangs up. Every week. Has never requested a song. Has never said anything else. I have started saying the time on the air right before I think he's going to call, to see if it stops him. It does not stop him. I've decided it's not really about the time.

The fourth call, when there is one, is somebody's roommate asking me to play something for somebody who is asleep, and I always do, and I always say the name, and I hope they hear it in their dream.

First Tuesday of the month, roughly, when I remember. Past and upcoming:

• All Vinyl Night. No CDs, no carts except the legal ones. The turntable in the studio has a wobble, so everything is very slightly seasick, and by 3 a.m. that's a feature.
• Songs Under Two Minutes. Sixty songs in two hours. I had to speak faster. My log looked like a grocery list. Fiddle Guy called to complain his fiddle song was too short. It was 1:51. He had a point.
• B-Sides Only. Flip everything over. Some of them are better. Most of them are not. That's the show.
• Nap Time. One hour of ambient records with no talking, announced ahead of time so the Night Nurse knows not to call. She called anyway to say it was "nice." Highest praise.
• Songs About Trains. There are more than you'd think. There are more than I thought, and I thought there were a lot. Two hours wasn't enough. There will be a Part 2.
• Songs About Weather, done live during an actual thunderstorm in May, and the power flickered during a song about lightning, and I have never felt more like a real DJ.
• Coming in October: The Halloween Show. Not scary songs. Songs that are scary at 3 a.m. specifically. You'll see. Or you'll be asleep, like a reasonable person.
• Coming December 31st: the station is doing a Y2K all-nighter with every DJ doing an hour. I asked for 2 to 3 a.m. on January 1st, 2000, and I got it, because nobody else wanted it. If the transmitter keeps working past midnight, I'll play something quiet. If it doesn't, I'll be the only person in the building with a flashlight, and that's basically the show anyway.

People ask. Here's my week: Monday I go to bed at 9 p.m. like a farmer. Tuesday I nap from 6 to 11 p.m., get up, eat cereal, and go to the station. Wednesday after the show I walk home as the sky goes gray, sleep till noon, miss the 9 a.m. class, feel bad, go to the 1 p.m. class, feel fine. Thursday I'm normal. Friday I'm normal. By Sunday I forget how tired Wednesday was and think "this is a great schedule." It is not a great schedule. It's the best two hours of my week.

The vending machine has been out of the good pretzels since March. If you are the person who stocks it: 2 a.m. Wednesdays. Please. I have quarters.