Spring Break: Harmful or Helpful?

Spring break is every teenager’s favorite week of second semester. It’s a time to take a break from the stress of school and enjoy a nice week on vacation or at home. But most of the time, coming back from spring break makes students want summer even more than before they left.

Spring break is the first taste of summer high schoolers get since first quarter — the warmth outside, the lack of homework, and the sleeping in make for a pretty good pre-summer combination. It feels like it will last forever until, just one week later, we’re brought back to reality and crushed by the weight of school once again.

High schoolers want summer more than ever once they return from spring break because not only did they get a teaser of the beloved season, but school gets even more hectic in the last couple of months. Tests, essays, and quizzes are thrown on kids every week, plus the looming finals and AP tests coming up in the last month of school. After having just come back from a week-long break, usually not spent on school, that is not what kids want to face. 

However, I’m not saying schools should get rid of spring break. If it didn’t exist, students would get so burnt out their brains would stop processing new information. But, there could be options such as adjusting the length of the break to keep students from being completely bombarded after returning to school.

According to The Odyssey, seven days of spring break is not enough — it needs to be at least two weeks. One week is not enough time to catch up on all the sleep students have lost staying up to study or finish homework, and they could benefit from additional time to relax. 

Plus, spring break itself can be exhausting. There is pressure on students to hang out with their friends, relax, catch up on sleep, and do anything they normally can’t do during the school week — which is just about anything fun. Some students even travel over break, so they have to fit traveling, getting back home, unpacking, recuperating from jet lag, and preparing for school again in only one week. 

Spring break is a great time for students to relax, but it can be stressful, and it can make things even worse once it’s over. The little teaser of summer it provides can be dangerous, but without it students would completely burn out. In the end, it’s all just a matter of managing productivity and preparing yourself for what’s ahead.