Opinion

Just go to Sleep Already! Why Napping is Great

How great do you feel after you wake up from a nap? Do you feel refreshed? Do you feel like you can function again? Don’t you just feel awesome? Well you should.

A study reveals that napping during the day after an uneasy sleep from the previous night, can actually be beneficial to your health according to an article published in New York Magazine. According to the article, the study consisted of 11 participants that engaged in this sleep deprivation experiment. The individuals were allowed two hours of sleep one night and the following day they were allowed two 30-minute naps to help recover from their lack of sleep. The study found that those who took the naps found themselves sleeping much better than the previous night and their stress hormones were at a healthy level.

Though the study only consisted of 11 people, it reveals a lot about how we function as human beings. It serves as a reminder that we are not machines and we need to take the time to take care of ourselves.

College is a place where the term “all-nighter” is used quite frequently in everyday conversation. We live in an environment where it is socially acceptable to deprive ourselves of sleep to get important things done and that’s not healthy. What’s even better is that people actually brag about how much they didn’t sleep because they were too busy doing work. How is that okay? 

It’s not. Plain and simple. How is it fair to stay up all night working on a class assignment that will most likely never be relevant to your life after the fact? And, yes, I understand professors do not encourage this behavior, but many professors don’t do anything to prevent it from happening either. It’s not that our educators are conspiring against us, but if they expect anything to get done something has to be sacrificed. More often than not, sleep is probably sacrificed the most in our lives and we don’t even realize it. 

According to the University of Georgia’s Health Center, the average college student gets around six to 6.9 hours of sleep per night when in reality they should be getting at least eight. Now it is unfair to attribute that missing two hours of sleep we should be getting to schoolwork because there are other factors involved.

Believe it or not, students have lives outside of the classroom. In fact, they even have other classes and some even have jobs or are part of organizations. All of these factors affect our sleeping habits. Whether it’s working late or going to a late night event, there are just some things that tend to get in the way of sleep. We can’t necessarily avoid our prior commitments, but there is a way to make everything work and still form healthy sleeping habits. We can’t help, but stay up late some times, but there are ways to mend our bad habits. 

Though many students complain about having class all day, no one actually has class all day every day. Yes, there are some people that go from 8:30 in the morning to 5:45 at night and then have activities after, but everyone has at least one moment during the week where they can take a nap. Whether it be for 30 minutes or two hours everyone has the time to take care of themselves by taking a nap.

Napping is not a bad habit whatsoever, but neglecting your personal health is. So get out your warmest blankets and turn off all the lights because it’s time to give yourself a break and go to sleep already.