Dear Future President,

Today I am writing to you about something I strongly believe in. I believe that high school students should be allowed to have nap time in high school. When you hear the term “nap time”, I’m sure that your brain automatically associates this with being young or childish. However, I believe that it is more necessary for high school students to have nap time than elementary students.

High school students need nap time more than others because a lot of us are involved in more activities. You can take me as an example. One day out of my week can consist of waking up at 6:30am and going to school for student council meetings. Immediately after this at 8am I am testing and working on schoolwork until around 3:30pm. Then following school I have volleyball practice until about 6pm, though my day is typically still not over. After all of those activities I might have church, dance team practice, or other various school activities that I am involved in. I will normally get home at around 9pm, and I still have to eat dinner, shower, and do a few more hours of homework. Usually I get to bed at around 11:30pm or midnight and it starts all over again the next day. I am not the only student that this happens to. This happens to way too many students these days. Getting an average of 6 hours of sleep during the night does not provide enough energy to endure the school day. This impacts my education in a negative way. I sit in class and try to pay attention, but I can’t focus because I am too busy focusing on not falling asleep. This lack of energy is draining and exhausting, which is detrimental to my learning

When students are exerting themselves for this long throughout the day, it is unhealthy. Not getting a good amount of sleep can have negative impacts on students’ health. Not getting enough sleep can cause their bodies to lose strength and slow down their mental processes. If students are constantly not getting enough sleep, and this becomes routine, then the effects can be much worse. They can develop a chronic illness because it weakens their body’s defenses. A study was done by students at Harvard Law School that shows the risk of death by all causes increases by 15% if someone is routinely sleeping only five hours a night.

Having nap time in school would not only benefit the students’ mental health, but also their physical health. The nap time wouldn’t have to be terribly long. If you sleep too long, it can make you just as tired as if the nap were too short. According to the National Sleep Foundation, the perfect amount of time to nap is twenty minutes. This works well for short term alertness and performance. Short naps leave your body rested but don’t overdo it. Also, twenty minutes is not a lot of time out of the school day. This would easily be an added amount of time to the school day. Increasing the school day by twenty minutes is a small price to pay for the overall health of our students.

As a sleep-deprived student who experiences this firsthand, I am asking you to read this and consider my points and my point of view. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Lindsay Kujanson

Junior at Okoboji High School