Welcome back, my fellow Bobcats! All of us here at HCQU are hoping you enjoyed an entire week off from academic-related stress—or at the very least, a break from attending classes. Whether you spent your Spring Break cruising the Caribbean, enjoying wild nights in the city, or appreciating the simplicities of being back at home, it is not possible to avoid the dreaded last leg of the semester any longer. Now that your midterms have been graded and you have had a week to play catch-up, it’s time to face the rest of the school year head on.
But that doesn’t mean you have to actually lose your head in the process. Instead, try your hand at mastering the common power nap, defined by Urban Dictionary as “A revitalizing, re-energizing, refreshing short but powerful sleep, usually mid-day, which is especially good for those times when one still has lots of work to do, is very tired, and has only 20 minutes in which to get back his or her productive power.” When you find yourself struggling to stay awake the day after skimping on sleep, a morning coffee paired with a mid-afternoon power nap may be just the tools for surviving, if only until finals.
“I’m too busy to take a nap,” you say? It’s not up to me, but I suggest you carefully pick your battles, my friend. Taking a power nap in the middle of the afternoon could mean the difference between spending several hours on all of your homework and spending several hours hovering over one assignment. According to the National Sleep Foundation, naps can help to increase alertness, improve performance, and reduce mistakes and accidents. In fact, a study conducted by NASA found 100% improved alertness in military pilots and astronauts who took brief naps. And on any given day, you can find that about one-third of American adults has taken a brief snooze, according to a Pew Research Center study. (I’m willing to bet that group of people is generally more productive as compared to those who don’t nap…but the results of this hypothesis are to be determined.)
If you’re one of those people that shun naps or can’t lie down without snoozing for upwards of three hours, I encourage you to, at the very least, make an attempt at power napping in the following week or two. Choose a time of day that works for both your body clock and your schedule—for me, it’s usually around two or three in the afternoon—and allow yourself somewhere between 20 and 60 minutes to completely unwind. Set an alarm, or a couple alarms, for when you want to wake up, and allow yourself to come back into your conscious slowly. If you’re already super tired, you’ll fall asleep right away and will wake up feeling energized and well rested. Sometimes all you need is a good 40 minutes to be ready to tackle the rest of what may turn out to be a long day.
Here are three important tips to remember as you begin your quest to unearth the power of power naps:
1. Avoid napping too early or too late in the day. If it’s too early, you may not be tired enough to fall asleep completely; thus, you won’t awaken feeling as well rested as you should. If it’s too late, you may have trouble falling asleep later that night.
2. Create an environment fit for sleeping. Close your blinds and your door, if that makes things a bit darker and quieter. You could also try using a white noise machine, which creates a steady flow of background noise that may help prevent you from thinking too much before falling asleep.
3. Don’t climb in bed for a nap and then sit on your phone for fifteen minutes. First of all, you are wasting precious naptime! Secondly, remaining plugged in until the last second before catching some shut-eye can prevent you from getting the quality of sleep that you deserve. (This goes for your nighttime rituals, as well.)
For more information on the importance of power naps and to learn how caffeine can affect your sleep cycle, read the Guide to Napping: How to Catch Some Extra Z’s by Nancy Mucciarone, a fellow Her Campus writer at Syracuse University.
Take some inspiration from the Sleeping Giant next door, and get ready to kick this second half’s a$$, QU collegiettes! Feel free to tweet us your power napping tricks or reasons why you follow a strict anti-nap policy @hercampusqu. Xoxo!