Don’t remember how I found out, but I may have stumbled on it trying to find a classroom in my freshman year many decades ago. And it was the only thing that kept me going.

It wasn’t in any of the orientation booklets or pamphlets about adjustment to college life meant to make you feel at home that were displayed in the counselor’s office. It wasn’t referred to in the interviews or introductory talks or added to the list that made this college so much better than others. And I never heard anyone talk about it.

But the college sleeping room was always open, at least every time I went. You entered through a normal wooden door in one of the buildings, just like any other classroom or professor’s office door. It really should have been a classroom, and may have been.

The building was old-fashioned. Looked and felt and smelled like a 50s high school in a middle-class area. An old square nondescript building, not dirty exactly but dusty; old brick and gray walls, with little attention to aesthetics or pleasing the users, least of all the present students, or any pretentions to design awards.

A sturdy, practical building, a women’s brown-oxford building, on this all-women’s Ivy League college campus.

I never knew whose idea the sleeping room was. An empathetic or sleep-deprived kindly dean of students? One who remembered her own groggy days as an undergraduate? Or an alum who staggered through her college days bleary-eyed and aching to collapse, fighting head-nodding while the art history professor droned on? Or a current professor, even, tired, in his late-afternoon classes, of staring at the sea of young heads sinking to their chests?  

Whoever lobbied for the room and however it came about, I was very grateful for it. I never told anyone else about it, and when I first came upon it, counted it as the greatest discovery of college.

I imagined others were grateful too. Not that I wanted to talk to them. In fact, I hardly ever saw anyone else there and didn’t want to.         

When you came in, you immediately encountered a ceiling-high dusty wood partition, like those separating two beds in room sharing. The partition shielded the present occupants from the reality of the door, although it couldn’t muffle the sounds of coming and going. The light was dim, just enough so you could maneuver your way to an empty cot. The room was shadowy, silent, strange.

A proctor—an administrative assistant—was supposed to be at the entrance but rarely was. Only once did I see her, sitting just inside the partition. She was reading (how she could in that light I don’t know) and barely looked up as I entered, either from consideration of privacy, disinterest, or pique at being stuck in this purgatory when she could have been assigned to the coffee shop.

In the room, bodies floated and settled. Ghostly, like a fog over the ocean. No one talked, greeted, or acknowledged. No glances were exchanged. I always kept my eyes down and opened the slits only to locate an empty cot.

The room was my transitional object from the haven of home to the tremors of college life. The subjects were mysterious, everyone else smarter than I, and I had no friends. Occasionally, I would stop another girl at the beginning or end of a class and try to make conversation. But I must have telegraphed such need that she only nodded, picked up her books, and quickly walked away. I nursed my hurt by sleeping.

Inside, I was in another world—of dimness, dusk, silence, except for the occasional door opening or closing or creaking of a mattress.

Like the room itself, I was hazy and foggy about college and what was expected of me. Managed to live through the requisite classes and, immediately after one was over, always snuck away to the irresistible reward.

The sleeping room was my cocoon, refuge, comfort. Almost the only thing I awoke for, so I could go back to sleep again. I parked my books and purse under the bed and hunkered down under the admittedly thin scratchy wool blanket, doubling the paltry pillow under my head. And sank away, in the bliss of forgetting. Finally, though, I couldn’t deny that I was all slept out. Blinked, stretched, sighed, gathered up my belongings, and tiptoed to the door, having to face my life again.

I was curious about sleeping rooms on college campuses today. Apparently, they aren’t new, although they’re called different things. Before introducing them, the articles usually cite the statistics on sleep deprivation and scientific virtues of napping. They’re called nap rooms, and some have nap “pods,” individual futuristic shells that completely enclose you.

I wonder if today’s undergraduates (and graduate students, for all I know) use their naps and pods like I did. Perhaps they don’t need to escape but just refresh and catch up from all-nighters. Hopefully, their college experiences are more congenial than mine. 

After I graduated, I heard the sleeping room was abolished. Turned into a janitor’s closet, partition and cots jettisoned, and bright lighting so the help could locate the huge drums of cleaning supplies, spray bottles, brushes, rags, and brooms.

But the sleeping room stays intact in my memory, blessed oasis that pulled me through those painful college years.

– Noelle Sterne

See articles:
2014 https://time.com/3211964/nap-rooms-at-universities/
2017 https://www.teenvogue.com/gallery/7-schools-that-have-nap-stations
2021 https://rest.works/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/US-Short-rest-solutions-in-university-settings.pdf