In elementary school, winter break was the highlight of the school year, only second to the last day of school. Gingerbread house building, movies, and hot chocolate made up the last couple of days before freedom. This year, however, I’ve spent the week hunched over homework and knowing that my holiday season will be filled with study guides instead of jingle bells and candy canes. This scrooge-ful mentality will unfortunately continue through break and into finals season, which begs the question, should finals be before or after those merciful two weeks?

Let’s all be honest: how many people really study over breaks? Maybe a fair amount of students eventually get around to it, but the hard truth is that motivating yourself over break is extremely difficult and feels borderline impossible. Maybe it’s just me, but most of the promises I made over Thanksgiving break about studying every day for physics didn’t really materialize, and while that’s obviously not ideal, it makes sense. Breaks are supposed to be breaks, right? As in, time for relaxing and recovering from the constant burnout caused by high school? But break doesn’t really feel peaceful when the threat of a final worth 20 percent of your grade or even just a unit exam is looming over your head. The promise of finals prohibits every concerned and ambitious student from truly taking their mind off the hard things they are dealing with. According the Jed Foundation, a nonprofit focused on suicide prevention and emotional health, “overwhelming school-related stress actually reduces your motivation to do the work, [and] impacts your overall academic achievement.” This is in effect especially around the holidays, when procrastination and “I’ll just do it tomorrow” are at an all time high. 

Instead of getting physical and mental rest, students are left scrambling to remember almost five months worth of content for four, five, six or possibly more classes. This, above all else, really just doesn’t make sense. The information may not be fresh in our minds right now, at the edge of December, but at least we haven’t had half a month of reasons to procrastinate under the excuse of it being winter break. In fact, a 2020 study from American Educational Research Journal cites that “Children lose up to 40 percent of the gains they have made over the school year while on summer break.” Though winter break is only a quarter of that, the statistics of learning loss still apply. It’s hard to keep tons of content in your brain when you aren’t being reminded of it in school every day, which just makes finals week harder, as it takes place directly after that period of learning loss. Even the one week lost to Thanksgiving break affected almost everyone I know. Coming back to school from that was extremely difficult, and I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like after double the time. 

Though the transition to the finals mentality in January is something I am dreading, I have to admit that the burnout right now isn’t much better. We all know the end of year drag; that just “get me through December” mentality, sleeping through alarms, thirty minute naps turned three hours struggle that feels like it won’t end. This suggests that winter break being before finals is actually an opportunity to rest and recuperate before academics get even harder. Maybe it’s a gift, wrapped in green and red ribbon. 

This doesn’t make the first real Monday of the year any easier, though. Instead, we’ll come back already exhausted, ready and waiting for spring break and not excited to study for finals. We’ll scramble to collect our books and packets, sit down at our desks and try to forget about the two weeks of no alarms and no bedtimes instead of returning refreshed, remotivated and with resolutions for the new year.