Napping is an interesting topic. When we are little kids, naps are hated breaks from the game or activity that we are doing. Through adolescent years, we tend to have so much energy that naps rarely occur. Now that I am in college, however, napping has become a pivotal part of my day. That may sound like a joke, but I am truly being serious.
Throughout the year, I have slowly been experimenting with different ways of getting quick and effective rest. The obvious power nap was where I began my slumberous journey. I would fit these little cat naps in whenever I had the time and, often, they would be right after I finished class. I realized quite quickly, however, that I was actually napping wrong. I did some research and found that by taking random naps with varying lengths of time, I was actually making my body more tired. My problem was that my body was not able to adapt to when I was taking naps because I was doing them so sporadically. I could not believe it, but I honestly needed to start planning when I would nap to keep things on a consistent schedule. It sounds strange, but I began to lay out 15 minutes per day at specific times so that my body could create a "clock" for when it rests. As you can tell, I take my naps very seriously.
My journey with naps began to make me realize, though, that I had a larger overarching problem with how I sleep. Around winter break, I started to notice that I was basically plateauing on most exercises in the gym. I tried desperately to figure out what I was doing wrong and then, after some looking online, I realized that I was living my life with a massively screwed up sleep pattern. While I was busy obsessing over naps, I hadn't realized that I had become obsessed with getting more and more sleep. It may sound impossible, but I was actually getting too much sleep. While I was pushing myself the farthest that I've ever done in the gym, my body was, overall, very inactive for large parts of the day due to my excessive sleeping.
Naps and sleep are a large part of most college students lives and, unfortunately, I think that there are probably many others out there who nap and sleep improperly. I hope that more young adults take a journey that is similar to mine and that they break any poor resting habits before they carry them permanently into adulthood.
