Sleep is everywhere. It’s in your room after a late night of studying, it’s inevitably on the comfy chair in the library mid-type of an exhausting paper, it’s the kid snoring in front of you in lecture. I’ve observed this tendency of students to arrive to class and make the trek to the library even when they desperately need sleep to continue functioning. These people eventually give in to the enticing nap facedown on their laptop keyboards. But why don’t we choose to take that short nap to power us through the work we need to complete, rather than forcing ourselves to stay awake at all costs?
People always wonder why some students show up to class every other day only to fall asleep for the entirety of the remaining lecture. I think this is because none of us intend to take a nap in our seats; we genuinely go into class hoping to remain awake to soak in the new material. The majority of students at Penn State are extremely hardworking and driven, which could in part be our sleepy downfall. Those students who appear to be lazy and dozing off instead of taking notes may have merely been the ones staying up all hours of the night to perfect a presentation for a class they are more passionate about or pertaining to their major.
It’s hard not to judge those who seem to choose to fall asleep rather than pay attention (we are often even hard on ourselves when we catch our heads bobbing). Yet we’re all going through a hectic time, where balancing activities and time management skills have come to the forefront of our lives like never before, and it takes adequate time to get properly adjusted. Next time, we just need to be sure to plan our weeks in advance and realize that when sleep is put on the backburner, at least make naps a priority.
Sleep is a very important topic in college to be sure. It’s neat to have seem someone highlight such a key, yet undervalued topic in college. I’m sure most of us have dozed off in the middle of a lecture (especially in Thomas or Osmond) so I totally understand that concept. Thanks for taking the time to remind me that laying down in between classes every day might just be the best idea I have that day.
With the final weeks of the semester approaching, I’ve been hard at work and barely getting any sleep. It wasn’t until yesterday that I took my first actual nap in a while (a solid two and half hours) but still ended up staying up until 3 to finish my work. In the days before where I tried not to take such a long nap, I found myself falling asleep in the library (big comfy chairs) or with my head down in the zombie lounge. Nevertheless, your blog was helpful in providing healthy sleeping habits that I never would have thought of before.
I liked this entry because I think it’s true that not every person sleeping in class is lazy, I know once or twice I’ve fallen asleep in class after a particularly long night.
I think it is a problem with the system that people would rather get up and go to class, only to fall asleep, than skip class to get sleep they should be getting.
Sure, some people sleeping in class are probably lazy but there are plenty of people who are awake that are equally, if not more, lazy.
I wish you luck in the rest of the year and hope you get everything you want.
–K.E. Van Develde
Glad I’m not the only one. But to me, sleep is important. Last night I didn’t get to sleep until 4 a.m. Not because of work, but because I’ve been watching True Blood. Because of this, I missed my 11:15 this morning. Some lectures just have a way of putting you to sleep, tired or not.
I found your blogs on sleep very original and this was a good post to wrap everything up. I agree its easy to judge people but we really don’t know exactly what they have been doing outside of the class they have just fallen asleep in. And some lectures just have a way of putting people to sleep even if they’re not tired. As you said college is a hectic time and we’re all bound to not get enough sleep at times.