Naps: Curse or Blessing?
Three tired college students looking for rest in their natural habitat.
Oh, naps. Whether they are short ten-minute snoozes or lengthy half-hour rests, they bait students on campuses all over the world with promises of rejuvenation and peace. Many college folks would even go so far as to say that naps are the best thing to ever exist. But are they? Are they really?
As an official nap veteran, I can say that I’ve become quite accustomed to the napping lifestyle. Class in twenty minutes? Let me take a quick nap. Study session in an hour? Sounds like nap time. Words in a textbook starting to look like a foreign language? Nap, please.
The problem begins when I wake up from a nap that was supposed to make me feel like I had a full night’s rest, but instead makes me feel like a mummy exhaling a thousand years’ worth of dust. I’ve spent three years of my college life experimenting with different nap lengths: ten to fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, twenty-five minutes, twenty-eight minutes, you name it, I’ve napped it.
Naps save the day when I’ve been up all night finishing a big project I should’ve known better than to have procrastinated on. Naps are great when my brain tells me that the fuel is empty and I’m sputtering down, but I still have the rest of the day to survive. But I can’t help but ask myself if I’ve become reliant on naps to get me through the day. What if naps are enabling me to have an inconsistent sleep schedule?
Sleep is essential, not just in college, but life in general. We all know that. At least for now, naps are a desperate measure for desperate times. I just hope that all of college doesn’t end up being a desperate time.
Tags: being healthy, college student, habits, naps, sleep
