WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Isabel Owen
Vacation. That sweet, sweet word that all students inevitably say with a craving on their tongue and a sparkle in their eyes. The longing for vacation is one thing that keeps many kids going through the school week (regardless of whether or not this is a healthy thinking habit). There is a valid reason for this strong, lusty desire: vacations are a necessary part of being a healthy, productive student.
We recently had a two-week holiday break—a rare occurrence in our school district. This amount of time provided students, their families, and school staff with a new opportunity for mid-year relaxation. In two weeks, one can read tons of books, take a tropical vacation, visit relatives abroad, spend hours relaxing with friends, catch up on hobbies and pastimes, and do what we all desperately needed to do by mid-December: rest.
You see, the two-week vacation gave us the opportunity to put our heavily academic lives on the back-burner for a bit. Hopefully, students took time to get their sleep schedules in check, spend time with family members, and simply have fun. This is not only beneficial to the general well-being of students but also for their academic performance. If the school system needs convincing for longer breaks in future years, maybe we should present them this fact: intermittent periods of relaxation lead to increased performance. And perhaps this even simpler fact can be the driving factor for longer vacations: we all need time to chill.