I believe that some people are on this earth to make us miserable. They take great joy in inflicting emotional stress on others, and might even make it their life’s mission to make other people’s lives hell.

These people are the teachers/professors that give assignments out over a break.

I’m usually not one to complain about doing work. I’m in college, that’s what I’m here to do. But there is a reason why Fall Break and Thanksgiving Break have the word “break” in them — to take a BREAK from all of the work we have been doing. Wow, isn’t it amazing how the concept of naming things for their purpose usually works out, but not when you’re in school? College, man.

In all honesty, I must ask what the hell these instructors are thinking when they create a syllabus with clearly-defined breaks in the semester and they still assign work for the break. Who hurt you? Who didn’t make you feel special as a child? Why must you inflict this kind of pain on us? There can be good people in this world, and you can be one of them!

I’ve been doing work for around 9-10 weeks straight without any kind of pause in my hectic college life, and all I ask is that we as students get a few days where I can unplug myself from the atmosphere I’m drowning in. But no, it never fails that we get a long project, take-home test or paper from our instructors to do “over the break.” I can see them all conspiring now to assign as many projects as possible in each one of my classes just to piss me off.

The point of having a break is to allow our minds to recover from the massive amounts of information we have been taking in over the past months. The mind is similar to our muscles in this sense; when muscles are exercised and fatigued, they need recovery time so they can continue to perform at normal capacity. Our studious minds are the same way, in that they need these mini-vacations from work and stress to be able to process intellectual information at an optimum level.

When work is assigned for a break, everyone is hurt @evilprofessors. We have to cut time out of our long-ahead planned events for the break such as spending time with our families, adventuring while the weather is perfect, or simply doing nothing. YOU have to grade all of this work in the future when I know you would much rather be spending time with your loved ones. Nobody wins when it comes to over-the-break work, so why do it?

Professors and teachers, do yourself a favor: be the cool people we all want you to be, for us and for yourself.