If you know me, you know I take daily naps. Get rid of that negative stigma in your head that napping is for "babies" and "you're wasting time doing nothing" and "you should get better sleep at night so you don't have to nap."

No, you're definitely wrong...napping is essential.

To my life. To my health. To my everyday functions. It is a necessity, and let me tell you why.

Currently, I am in a special topics anthropology class about sleep. For those who know my love for the anthropology department at school, they know, trust me, I really truly never shut up about it. #loveyourmajor. Anyway, I digress. Some topics of discussion we have in class that are super ~relevant~ to my life thus far are the functions of the brain, our circadian and homeostatic rhythms syncing up to tell us when we should be awake and when we should sleep, cross-culturally how we, as a society, sleep, and what amounts that we do in comparison to other countries. Interesting as it is, anthropologists do not actually know why we sleep.

We know its functions, its architecture, and its clear benefits from self-reported individuals, but we don't exactly know what it's doing for us. Crazy, right? So yeah, we don't need 9+ hours of sleep. Hate to break it to you, but the mortality rate increases past +/- 7 hours for a young adult. (Ok, not saying you're going to spontaneously die from sleeping in on lazy Sundays, but I can link you to some research about that. Take a look!)

What I'm trying to get at here is that the outcomes of a good night's sleep is primarily up to the individual: how you feel in the morning (which is debatable, because sleep chronotypes, aka if you're a lark or a night owl, exist, and you can very well just be an evening person, but that's a story for another day), how much energy you seem to have, and how refreshed you feel after a few hours in your REM/NREM cycles.

For me, I easily sleep 7-8 hours on a daily basis. Yes, I have 8:30-AM classes Monday through Thursday. Yes, it's a nightmare to some, but I like it. Yes, I am a morning person. No, I am not making this up to amp myself up. No, this is not the reason I nap either.

I have a lot of energy throughout the day, which is a result of my good night's sleep, yes, but also from other daily habits, including napping. This is not to say that those of you who don't necessarily get at least 6 or 7 hours of sleep a night don't have energy...I'm sure you do, just in different ways.

The point is, napping works wonders.

We work so hard as college students, and we get to have those breaks. This is not to say that you should avoid all responsibilities by napping for two hours, I'm saying that it is completely normal to do so. I've had a few people ask me "why do you nap so much?" and comments like "you should go to sleep earlier, you're always tired." Well, I nap because it's a source of comfort for me. I also think my bed is super freakin' comfortable...I promise it's literally a cloud with billions of pillows and blankets.