Catching Zzzs for MGMT

Few students at any competitive college will have reached this point in the semester without hearing the old adage — “studying, socializing, sleeping — choose two.” Recognizing that the third in the tricolon is often placed on the back burner, PennSleeps was created to raise awareness of its importance.

“It’s almost like a badge of honor to get only a little bit of sleep,” PennSleeps’ founder and Wharton junior Eric Kim said. “But there are a lot of benefits to healthy sleep that people kind of know about but often overlook: it helps with memory consolidation and maintaining body regularity, which is very important for managing stress.”

Kim hopes to raise awareness and alter this mindset to a more healthy one with the launch of his new student group.

PennSleeps is Kim’s project for his Management 104 class. The assignment was to spend the semester creating some sort of social movement on campus to enact positive change.

“We’re trying to get students to acknowledge the value of healthy sleeping habits in the context of academics,” he said.

The first event organized by PennSleeps took place on Thursday Nov. 20 in Huntsman Hall. Sandra Herman, an expert on a variety of wellness issues and an employee of Student Health Service offered a question and answer session on practical ways to improve sleeping habits to all interested Wharton students.

The meeting began with over 20 attending students introducing themselves and explaining their interest in PennSleeps. Many of the testimonies suggested a demand for practical advice for maximizing productivity.

As PennSleeps is a movement launched in order to complete the assignments for a class, and as the semester is now drawing to a close, it is unclear exactly what the future of the group will be.

“Our initial goal was just to get the awareness out,” Kim said.

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