It’s that time of the year again — spring! The dreaded allergy season that currently has me under the impression that I can build a fortress from all the tissues I’ve been using. Ignoring the downfalls of this new season, with the arrival of spring comes every college student’s favorite vacation known as spring break. Yes, it even beats out winter break because despite the length of the vacation time granted to us in the winter, nothing can quite beat the perfect weather that March has to offer. With perfect weather comes perfect vacation spots.
Depending on where you’re currently located, your spring break could have ended two weeks ago, a week ago or it may have just ended as you’re reading this. Or maybe it’s even starting! If your break is ending, though, then there’s a possibility that you’re wondering where your week of vacation went.
It doesn’t matter where you spend your spring break -- in the country, out of the country, visiting home or in the comfort of your own home. Spring break always flies by far too quickly. No matter how much fun you manage to have during the break or how much missed sleep you catch up on, you’ll probably still return home the Sunday before classes start up again to a pile of things that need to be done and not enough time to do them.
Not to say that any one of us lets things purposely pile up while we were off on whatever adventure we may have been on. It’s just a natural cycle of college. Try as you might to spread assignments and other projects out responsibly, and manage your time and health, somehow, some things just overtake you.
It’s even worse during spring semester when spring break is one of the very few recesses offered to college students. Few universities and some community colleges give President’s Day off — but more often than not, that’s a day off for high school students.
Because there’s only one vacation offered during spring semester, it tends to feel like a semester that drags on forever. And because of the constant workload, it also feels a lot tougher than other semesters.
Not to mention, if you’re lucky enough, you may also have your spring break placed smack dab in the middle of midterms. Some of those exams come before the break when your brain is already away on early vacation as you attempt to prepare. Or some of those exams may even come that Monday after the break ends when your brain is stuck in vacation mode and you’re stressing over the fact that a week set aside for you to relax had to be spent studying, and you still can’t recall the information needed. Information that may make or break your semester GPA. Your professors aren’t going to be cutting you any slack for the two situations, either.
I get it, though. We’re in college, and we have work to do. Sometimes, we have a lot of work to do. We’re adults and we should be able to appropriately manage our time and workload. But shouldn’t time that’s set aside for students and advertised with the word “break” be just that — a break? There’s no possible way to entirely cut the workload from spring break when things absolutely need to be learned in a semester’s time. Some slack would still be nice, though. With the way spring break is now, it’s more stressful than helpful, and it’s meant to be a time for students to recuperate.
