Running on little sleep, students rely on naps to get through the day
Lydia Chapman
Senior Reporter
On a gray Tuesday afternoon, Zackary VandenBosch wakes up in a panic.
For a moment, he’s sure he’s slept through class. His heart is pounding, the room looks wrong, and outside his window it’s already pitch black. The clock on his laptop reads 5:30 p.m., but after a post time change nap, it feels like 2 a.m.
“I thought I’d slept like six hours,” he says, laughing. “I got on my computer and started trying to do an assignment. Then I looked down and realized it had only been an hour and a half.”
For the senior nursing major and RA, naps like these aren’t indulgences, they’re a survival strategy. VandenBosch naps almost every day, usually for an hour or two, squeezed somewhere between early-morning clinicals, late-night RA duties, and the whirl of ...