Every kid looks forward to summer vacation. And who wouldn’t? You can sleep in as late as you want. You can spend sweltering summer days on the beach. No homework. No school to worry about. All you have to be concerned with is what time you’re meeting your friends at the movies.

But then you end up exhausting all possibilities of fun, and you’re left utterly bored. That happens right around the middle of August. You start feeling bad sleeping in past noon. You see back to school ads on TV. That’s when the denial starts.

No. No way is summer almost over. You know it has to end at some point, but why now? You know it happens every year, but why so soon? Where did your summer go?

Then comes anger. Mostly at yourself. Why didn’t you do something more with your summer? It feels like all you did was watch Netflix! You wish there was a redo button you could click and start your whole summer over again. You’re frustrated at yourself because at the end of the school year you were so motivated. You said that you were going to do all these cool things like go on a road trip with your buddies, but that never happened.

There’s a looming sense of dread over the upcoming school year and building anger over not doing anything this summer. And that’s when you start to bargain.

Okay. Let’s look at the calendar. You only have three more weeks of summer left. What can you do? Suddenly you’re extremely motivated to do anything and everything. You could redecorate your room. You can plan a vacation or learn how to play chess. If you cram the rest of your summer with all kinds of activities then it’ll seem longer than it is.

Mostly, you just wish that you could have a little more time. You’d give anything to have another month of summer. You dread going back to school.

Knowing it’s physically impossible to actually get back another month of school, the depression hits. School is inevitable. The end of summer is nigh. You’ve wasted an entire three months, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You fall into a comatose-like depression, waiting for death to come and take you before September first.

Then you have an epiphany one day on your couch while you’re watching Netflix. You’re incredibly bored and have absolutely nothing to do. You start wondering why you’re so depressed that school’s starting. Maybe school would be good for you. Maybe it would be nice not to be so bored, to have something to do. You could see your friends all the time. You wouldn’t have to schedule times to hang out. You remember how much you actually enjoy your favorite subject and that one teacher who actually makes learning fun.

You think that maybe school wouldn’t be so bad. It might actually be kind of nice. You know you’ll think differently three weeks into September when you have five hours of homework and an endless amount of tests and papers to turn in, but right now...school sounds a little better than end of summer boredom. And that, you know, is the final stage of back to school grief: acceptance.