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This Friday, College Magazine took home the first place prize ($2,000) for the best University of Maryland Community Business at the Entrepreneurship Invitational event thrown by the Dingman Center. We couldn’t have done it without the amazing support of Kevin Kirk (friend and fellow entrepreneur) and Diana Elbasha (our Sex & Dating editor). Since I was away in Cali meeting with our Jacob Tyler team on the new website design, Kevin and Diana were fully responsible for manning our College Mag table. They sent play-by-play text message updates of the event with pictures of our table complete with posters of our website, magazines and, of course, water pong. But the table and logoed Ping-Pong balls were the easy part. I was most impressed by Kevin and Diana’s ability to spread our College Magazine vision to the voters.

It’s through their enthusiasm for College Magazine and, in the words of Diana, talking more than she has in her entire life, that won over the voters. Thank you guys for believing in College Magazine and representing us at the competition—we couldn’t have done it without you!

As I’m reading about AOL’s legendary acquisition and preparing for a night of dreams that replace the words “Huffington Post” with “College Magazine,” I also consider the other turn of events from today…although they didn’t seem to make it in Wall Street Journal.

The Bad: An innocent trip to the dentist today turned into discovering that my wisdom teeth will have to go. My first thought: When will it be best for College Magazine’s schedule for me to set a date for the surgery? I think I’ll feel better about the whole thing if I wait until we reach at least 100K monthly uniques.

The Great: Met up for coffee today with my friend, vitaminwater marketing manager and social media guru, Kevin Burke. As we caught up on CM and vw, the conversation quickly turned Twitterific. While most of Kevin’s insider knowledge remains top secret, I figured he wouldn’t mind if I leaked a few to my loyal readers (hi Mom!):

Twitterific Tip 1: Don’t fear the hashtag (#). It will get you everywhere.

Twitterific Tip 2: Just because you’re not friends with Tim Tebow, doesn’t mean you can’t @TimTebow him. Chances are slim, but if he re-tweets your Aaron Rodgers Superbowl Spotlight article, your tweet will be in the twitter feeds of 100K followers.

Twitterific Tip 3: Create a regular twitter routine. Stay tuned for CM’s “Non-Coffee-Fetching Internship of The Day” tweet starting tomorrow at 10am.

So the jet lag has worn off and now I’m simply back to my own terrible schedule of working until at least 3am. Am I alone in the fact that all the best ideas happen between 1am and 3am? (And in the shower.)

I should probably be taking the advice from our own articles on sleep cycles. But let’s get realistic here: if College Magazine is going to reach the 18 million college students in The States, then spending my best thinking hours sleeping is not going to get the job done. I guess that’s just one downfall of being an entrepreneur—you put the business before yourself. (My fellow entrepreneurs, sound familiar?) The business is your baby.

So if you’re thinking of starting a business, beware:

1. Sleep- Forget it. Cue the bags under your eyes (which my roommate recently complimented me on).

2. Social life- Sure, as long as your outings are spur of the moment when you can squeeze in some extra time. Plans in advance are pushing your luck.

3. Shopping- As if!

4. Sanity- Let’s just say lack of sanity and lack of sleep go hand in hand. Not to mention, sanity could be a disadvantage to running a business; sane people take fewer risks.

So, would I give up the thrill of running my own business for all these things? Never. Being an entrepreneur is the greatest rollercoaster there is. It’s a learning and personal growth experience, a true test of what you can accomplish when you’re passionate about an idea.

As a compromise for the mag and my health, my goal these next few weeks is to get to bed by 1:45am. Think I can do it?