After the shark tank, we met with Mr. Standley to talk with him about our potential ideas for nap zone spaces. With his advice, we reached out to Mr. Sazo, one of the deans, to talk with him about our ideas for our i2 project. Early January, he gave us permission to use the upper Atrium to beta test our nap zones. If our experiment is successful, we also plan to reserve space in DePaul for our nap zones. We wanted to make sure that our nap zone experiment was both valid and reliable. If the students used the nap zones, we hoped that they would be able to catch up on some sleep, resulting in being less sleep deprived, along with having more energy and improvement in well-being and mental health.
Once we had permission for LaSalle, Morgan emailed Mr. Standley a list of the items we wanted to order. We ordered 3 rugs and 2 beanbags, and they were going to take a few weeks to arrive. Unfortunately, there was a minor delay, and the material would not come until early February. However, we already had a bean bag from home, and also ordered a rug ourselves. Since I played on the JV Girls basketball team, I notified my friends of my i2 experiment, and they were all very eager to participate. I talked with Morgan, and we agreed that my basketball team could be our first “test subjects”. I told my friends that they would be able to use the nap zones, and their only “homework” would be filling out a short survey that would help us convince the deans that nap zones would be beneficial to the school as a whole.
As our season began, my teammates were in the atrium doing homework and resting anywhere from 2 to 4 hours after school. From past experience, I have seen many of my teammates attempting to sleep on the cold wooden floor, or trying to find a comfortable position on the hard metal benches to do homework. When the first bean bag came, I brought it up the stairs after school for my teammates to try out. There was only 1 bean bag, and about 15 people wanted to use it. It was very popular, and they looked forward to the other items that would be coming in a few days. When our memory foam rug arrived, I couldn’t even roll it out all the way before my friends started calling dibs on certain spots. Thankfully, Mr. Sazo allowed us to use a storage closet in the Pavilion for convenient access and clean-up when we weren’t using them.