Bournemouth University should have a nap room

Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?!


Students are notorious for their love of naps. Pulling all-nighters to write an essay and too many Cameo Wednesdays are probably to blame for poor sleep health, but we shouldn’t feel guilty.

I for one am raging in support of the nap. Even just a quick 20-minute snooze has been proven to increase alertness and performance. In Spanish cultures they plan their day around the infamous ‘siesta’ and in China, workers and school children often take naps to allow them to work a longer day.

The more seasoned of nappers will argue there is a certain technique to successful napping, but research has shown that a nap between 10 and 30 minutes leaves you feeling refreshed and not groggy after your slumber.

Most people I talk to would self-diagnose themselves with a sleep disorder or at least agree that their sleeping pattern has been nocturnal since they left home.

When studying gets too much

Not all students are lazy and tired from going to bed at 3 in the morning though, some actually work pretty hard. Granted, I’m a first year so I won’t pretend I work very hard but I’m sure holding down a job whilst writing your dissertation can be pretty stressful and tiring.

Bournemouth wouldn’t be the first university to have a nap room. Teesside, the University of East Anglia and Plymouth have all provided their students with some much-needed shut-eye on campus. Manchester have even installed sleeping pods similar to those you might see at Google on site, now that really is commitment to the cause!

This is actually what they look like!

Currently, Lansdowne Campus have what is called a ‘rest room’ but it really is a pitiful display with bean bags, blankets and … a microwave? Plus, Talbot campus only has a ‘quiet room’ as an equivalent. There’s a couple of bean bags but that’s about all. It doesn’t exactly house many people and it’s tucked away above the doctors’ surgery- who even knew there was such a place?

It may even go so far as to stop that annoying situation of finding a ‘free’ seat on the SUBU benches only to discover someone has claimed it as a bed.

Trust me, I’ve thought this through and what I propose is this:

A designated quiet space in SUBU with mattresses in some sort of large tent would suffice, with students able to book slots of up to 40 minutes snooze. Perfect to fit in-between lectures.

So come on people, for the sake of sleep deprived students everywhere, get behind me on this.