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Sleeping, napping and staying up: the meanings of sleep among college students

Throughout public discourse, sleep, despite being a physiological function and an important facet of an individual's health, is frequently utilized as a rhetorical device to comment on an individual's productivity within society. As Antje Richter (2003:34) explains, to consider someone early to rise yet late to bed is less a comment on their sleeping behavior and more an assessment of their dedication to their business. Too often productivity is conveyed as existing in the absence of sleep, an idea that has contributed to the association of sleep with laziness (Yi 2003:60) and a general misuse of time (Richter 2003:36). The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between sleep and personal perspectives of productivity within a college population. Utilizing in depth, ethnographic semi-structured interviews, and working with 25 college students from the University of Central Florida, it was found that the standards and expectations students have internalized regarding their productivity are influencing the way in which they are practicing in their daily sleeping behaviors and ultimately influencing the amount of sleep they get each night.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses1990-2015-2469
Date01 May 2013
CreatorsTate, Natasha
PublisherSTARS
Source SetsUniversity of Central Florida
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceHIM 1990-2015

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