We asked three Bulldogs to test three different sounds across three nights. They were given whale noises, white noise, and train sounds. Each night, they listened to a different of the three sounds for 45 minutes, attempting to fall asleep in that time frame. Here they explain which helped them sleep better and which were unbearable.

English Teacher Bain Willard

  “I did find the whale sounds soothing. And part of it was there was an ebb and a flow, like a rhythm to it, which I associated with a heartbeat, or this prenatal womb environment. And I think typically those sorts of rhythms are very, very soothing and comforting. So that was definitely, of the three, the one that I actually enjoyed and found helpful in falling asleep.I do get that the whales were a little mournful and that could be sort of melancholic, but at the end of the night, that was something that just really was calming for me. The other ones honestly did not work for me at all, and I actually didn’t play them for the entire 45 minutes. The white noise was just sort of, like, I was aware of it, but not in a soothing way, more of an off putting way. I could imagine that if you lived in a noisier neighborhood where you were looking to mask other sounds that that could be beneficial for some folks.” 

Sophomore Beckett Dinger

  “My favorite one was probably the white noise because that one I actually fell asleep to, and my least favorite was easily the whale one. It was kind of creepy. It just kept me awake at night. My sister forced me to turn off the [sounds] after like 20 minutes. It was the same with the train one. That one just didn’t really do anything because I [live] by train tracks. I sleep better in louder environments, [so] I have a harder time falling asleep when it’s, like, dead silence, which is kind of weird. My house is by a highway, so it’s kind of unnatural for it to be silent.”

Senior Katerina Williams

“The train was my least favorite. It’s just because it kept me awake and it didn’t really help me sleep, and I already constantly live next to a train. So it was just super agitating to always try and fall asleep, and it just keeps doing the train work. I’m waiting for that 45 minutes or whatever, just so I could turn it off.” Williams goes on to explain why white noise was her favorite out of the three. “I recently got a puppy and you used to be able to hear the puppy whine and then when I played it, it would literally block out the whining, and I would just listen to that. If it’s too quiet, I can’t fall asleep. It feels like your thoughts start [focusing on] so many thoughts, but if it’s a medium noise, nobody’s too loud nobody’s too quiet, I think I can definitely sleep.”