What does fall break mean to me? Well, picture this:
It’s the middle of October. There are leaves on the ground. There are pumpkins on porches. Hocus Pocus is on Freeform every hour of every day. All Reese’s are shaped like pumpkins or ghosts. We have the week off of school. It’s perfect. And I actually don’t care.
Those pretty leaves that are on the ground? They’re dead. The pumpkins you carved? They’re going to decay. Do you know how many people died during the Salem witch trials? Hocus Pocus should not be glorified like that. And don’t even get me started on the money trap that is the holiday Reese’s.
I don’t care about any of these things. They all mean nothing to me. They’re all sad and dying and boring and stupid. Fall is stupid. Fall Break is stupid. And even if it weren’t stupid, I wouldn’t have time to care about it anyway. How could I when I have 75 papers, 46 exams and just about a million other responsibilities to be concerned with right now?
“I need Fall Break right now because I can’t handle another test,” sophomore Kaitlyn Walker said. “I need to go home and see my dog and my family.”
I feel like that’s probably a common thought among most students, but as a self-proclaimed Fall Break hater, I can’t agree.
It’s a real chicken and egg situation, isn’t it? Do we have a million things due before Fall Break because professors know that we’re going to have a week off, or do we have to have a week off because the school knows if they don’t give us a break after midterms that we might actually die?
Because I might die. I might actually. If I have to think about organic chemistry for another second, I might actually pass out. It’s killing me, just like those stupid leaves on the ground.
Maybe that’s what Fall Break is. Maybe it’s not a break from school. It’s just supposed to signify a mental break, a psychotic break, if you will. That would make a lot of sense considering I still have things to do during Fall Break. Maybe I just had the definition wrong the whole time.
If that’s the case, I think that we should get rid of Fall Break. If it’s just supposed to signify the break in my mental stability, then let’s get rid of it because I actually don’t need to be reminded of how poorly I’m doing at this point in the semester.
But if we undo Fall Break, maybe it won’t be that bad. Maybe taking a break with Fall Break would make our lives easier. Maybe Fall Break is the real villain in this story.
If we get rid of this little break, we can spread out some of the work. Instead of having 15 things due one week, we can have a nice, humane seven or eight, or whatever.
Personally, I would sacrifice my week off for three weeks of class in peace. Can you imagine? Three whole weeks where they are less stressful, instead of one week that is crazy stressful, a week of nothing, and then another insanely stressful week.
I’m not the only one who thinks that might be better though.
“Can professors stop making assignments due immediately after break because ‘We’ll have time during break?’” sophomore Fatima Salman said. “How is it a break then?”
I agree. How is it a break? It’s more of a silver lining of peace right before I’m thrown back into a pit of despair the very next week. It’s kind of like letting prisoners go outside on a sunny day.
It’s actually sad because I do love fall. I do love Gilmore Girls and Halloween, and I do really like Reese’s pumpkins. It’s just that all of that is now synonymous with exams and papers and responsibilities. It ruins my favorite part of the year, and that might be why I hate it so much.
So I guess to answer the question, fall means something to me, but I hate Fall Break so much that it kind of ruined the whole thing for me. I guess you could say that I don’t hate fall break; I just hate everything surrounding it. But that’s too nuanced for me, and I really don’t have the energy for all that right now.
So it’s simple: I hate Fall Break. Let’s get rid of it. I think it will fix all of my problems, right?
