Graphic by Jillian Homa.

After a long school day, a lot of high school students come home exhausted. The first thing they want to do is lay in bed and just relax, but most of the time that leads to falling asleep.

After school naps are common among high school students. Most of the time students go to bed late and wake up early, so by the time they get home, they are exhausted.

Sophomore Jordan Klein said she takes after school naps pretty often.

“I probably take around 2-3 days during the seven day week,” Klein said.

Students falling asleep when they get home happens a lot. This could be caused by mental fatigue, which is just when your mind gets tired after doing a lot of thinking. There are also a lot of students who have after school activities like sports, clubs or even have to do homework which tires students and their brain out even more.

Most high school students get between 7 – 7 ¼ hours when they should be getting around 9 – 9 ½ hours a day. Klein takes after school naps but is still able to get the recommended amount of sleep every night.

“I usually get around nine hours of sleep at night even after taking a nap after school,” Klein said.

Sophomore Jack Sanders is another student who takes after school naps, but when he takes after school naps, he doesn’t get the recommended amount of sleep.

“I would say I probably get around 5 – 6 hours of sleep per night after taking a nap after school,” Sanders said.

Some students say that they don’t get affected by taking after school naps though.

“Personally I don’t [feel tired after naps] because I feel like I can take a 2-3 hour nap after school and still go to bed when I need to go to bed,” Klein said.

According to Dr. Daniel Vesslor, taking after school naps could be beneficial as long as they don’t last several hours, so taking a 2 -3 hour nap after school could help you get more energy to continue the day whereas taking a long nap can make it harder to wake up.

Sophomore Michelle Simms is another student at SHS who often takes after school naps. She said that her naps usually range between twenty minutes to two hours

Frequently taking long naps later in the day can often affect how well you’re able to sleep at night since your body is no longer tired once you wake from those naps.

Sanders said that he takes longer naps after school, so it makes it harder to fall asleep at night.

How much sleep someone gets at night really depends on the person, but most of the time if they are taking longer naps during the day, you will struggle to fall asleep more at night.

Some easy ways you can improve your sleep schedule can be to wake up around the same time everyday, go to bed around the same time every night, avoid drinking caffeine or alcohol in the evening and stay away from eating big meals at least 2 hours before going to sleep.

But when you wake up after a nap it takes a little bit to gain that energy back because all you want to do is stay cuddled up in bed.

“It’s harder to get up and do things after taking a nap, but once I get up I have more energy,” said Simms.