I have to confess, at school I was staunchly anti-nap. While the long days of lining up on the field for yet another fire alarm drill, frittering away money on meal deals and lighting Wotsits over Bunsen burners in Chemistry were oddly demanding, I never once felt the need to crash when I got home. Why would I want to throw away a perfectly good evening that could be spent rewatching crucial episodes of Gossip Girl, or updating my Snapchat private story with the latest quadratics-induced mental breakdown (I’m just an English student)?

“Nothing humbles your sleep schedule or energy levels quite like arriving in Cambridge”

The spirit of the Duracell bunny stuck with me through GCSEs and A-Levels, only briefly abandoning me to the throes of fatigue during my girls’ holiday. But it seems nothing humbles your sleep schedule or energy levels quite like arriving in Cambridge, where rowing practice is at 6:15am, your first lecture is at 9am and your essay is due at midnight. Never have I been so quickly converted to something as I have been to the power nap, so you can rest assured that I’ve accumulated a fair bit of wisdom on the topic (possibly at the expense of the kinds of wisdom that I expected to gain from a university degree). Gone are the days where I would wake up bleary-eyed, groggy and with a sour taste in my mouth; instead, here’s how I consistently maximise the half-hour sweet spot between lunch and a supervision.

1. Purchase a fun eye mask

An absolute essential if you’re lucky enough to be napping on a day when the sun’s out, especially since curtains in student accommodation tend to be about as effective at blocking out the light as the walls are at blocking out the noise. Having something to cover your eyes is undoubtedly the best way to simulate nighttime and the sweet, sweet relief of an eight-hour buffer between you and your impending contact hours.

But if you want to upgrade your napping proficiency to diva level (and, let’s be honest, why wouldn’t you?), then prioritising a fun eye mask design is the way to go. A quick spell of procrastination and I’ve already found some particularly sexy frog, llama and sloth options that will not only do wonders for your beauty sleep, but have you looking like sleeping beauty while you’re at it.

2. Set a motivational song as your alarm

“It was worth the wait to have George Michael telling me to ‘wake up and go, go’ after my nap”

This is something that I’d wanted to do for ages, but for some reason couldn’t figure out how to for an embarrassingly long time. I can now confirm that it was worth the wait to have George Michael telling me to "wake up and go, go" after my nap, or Rihanna letting me know that it’s time to "work, work, work" because I’ve let the essay deadline creep up on me again.

The boost provided by motivational music is especially crucial when you’re waking up from a nap as opposed to a full night’s sleep. I’ve discovered that the secret to dispelling the sense of disorientation is to embrace it fully – because if you’re going to be bewildered, you might as well be bewildered by the fact that your phone’s blasting club anthems than simply because of your being fully-clothed in bed on a Tuesday afternoon.

3. Try a ‘caffeine nap’

Yep, you heard me right. While this might seem like an oxymoron, the science suggests that drinking a coffee quickly before you take a 20 minute nap can help you to wake up more alert and refreshed. If Wham! isn’t going to cut it, and you need a more sure-fire energy boost, then you might benefit from a quick trip to the buttery before heading home for some shut-eye. The advice is to drink up as fast as possible and then almost immediately settle down (probably best practice to try and avoid the booths in the Sidge libraries but hey, I’m not one to judge). Set an alarm for 20 minutes so that you wake up just as the caffeine is kicking in.

4. Visualisation

On occasions where I’ve been a bit too overzealous with napping and then can’t fall asleep at night, I find visualisation techniques really helpful. My favourite is to imagine I’m relaxing on a beach in the Maldives, or maybe I’m floating around on a flamingo lilo in a pool in the south of France (can you tell I’ve thought about this a lot?). This approach to relaxation works equally well if you’re trying to maximise the efficiency of your naps and drift off super speedily. If you try really hard, you might even be able to fool yourself into thinking you really went on holiday. As you master the art of self-delusion, you’ll quickly find your 20 minute doze becoming the closest thing to a daycation within term time!

Whether you were yapping outside the Van of Life for a bit too long post-Revs, indulging in a Netflix binge until 3am or taking full advantage of your college library’s 24 hour opening window, you’re now covered for the next day’s recovery plan. Sweet dreams and happy napping!

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