College and the art of napping

The first thing you should know about me is that I tend to sweat when I sleep. I sweat like I was leading an expedition through an uncharted Amazonian rain forest and forgot to pack short sleeves. The second thing you should know about me is that I tend to drool when I sleep. There is not an appropriate analogy for how much I drool, so let's just say it's a lot. The third thing you should know about me — which makes the others about 10 times worse — is that, quite regularly, I fall asleep in Frist.

This is never intentional. Usually, I have just finished class and am walking back to my room through Frist, when I pass by the large screen TV and the extremely comfortable chairs in the lobby. Old football games flicker across the screen and tempt me.

"Well, a moment of 'NFL Classics' never hurt anyone," I think, and settle in to watch.

The truth, I soon learn, is that in the classic NFL games, practically everyone got hurt. Back when the Super Bowls were still in the single digits, scientists hadn't yet invented the concept of safety, and as such, football players had not quite figured out which position was supposed to wear which type of protective gear. Linemen wore the type of helmet now given to quarterbacks, quarterbacks wore the two bar helmet now given to kickers, and kickers were left with a small coonskin cap, in the style of Davy Crockett.

But I digress. Though the bloodbath on the screen captivates me, my exhaustion is profound, and I drift into deep sleep. Three hours later I usually awake to a small crowd of mildly horrified onlookers and realize what I've done. Once, I even woke up to find myself drooling profusely and leaning on the shoulder of the person sitting next to me. There is simply no apology that can undo something like that.

The second worst thing about these naps is that they do very little to make me feel less tired. For about two hours after a nap, I will stumble about in a haze, managing, at most, to play a couple of games of online chess. Eventually I will recover, just in time for bed. This is when my body kicks into full action.

"Let's do something!" my body says.

"But it is 3 a.m., body. We have to sleep. Why didn't you want to do something earlier, like homework?"

"The body works in mysterious ways!"

"You're thinking of the Lord. The Lord works in mysterious ways. You're just annoying."

"I know! Isn't it grand?" At this point I count sheep to little effect.

There is no pursuit more hopeless than trying to fall asleep after a midday nap, unless you're trying to read a Pequod packet the next day. It's a vicious cycle, napping. After five hours of sleep, every unfinished assignment is a nap waiting to happen. The one advantage of this is that I often end up dreaming about whatever I was doing when I fell asleep, which means that I can count those as study hours. To be fair though, I find it hard to imagine what kind of positive effect a dream about showing up to an econometrics exam naked could have on my studies.

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I have also napped through far too many dinners this semester. At first, this wasn't a big problem, as my grandparents had given me gift cards for Panera and PJ's Pancake House. Soon, though, I ran out. When I oversleep and miss dinner now, I must subsist on prepackaged soups that my parents sent me with the best of intentions but the laxest of attention to food quality. Let me warn you, though the name is promising, Dinty Moore Chicken and Dumplings contains neither chicken nor dumplings, and is one of the nastiest things I've ever eaten.

On the way home after fall break, I was reminded of the one time my napping ability actually comes in handy — on the plane. Most people find it impossible to sleep on while flying. Not me. I grab the standard issue white pillow and red blanket, recline the seat a couple of inches and I'm out before the people sitting next to me have time to say stop. I end up missing the meals, but this is a small loss. The Dinty Moore Chicken and Dumplings waiting in my room recreate the experience nicely. Tom Knight is an economics major from San Juan Capistrano, Calif. He can be reached at ttknight@princeton.edu.