Students attend school 180 days in a year. 180 days of sitting in a classroom with books upon books piled on their desks. Papers and pens are found in all areas of the room as the class gets ready for an hour lecture of material that is repeatedly said over and over again until it sticks in your mind. Homework starts piling up after visiting each class and then the stress comes. Yay! More work to complete and less time for sleep and hanging out with friends!

The amount of stress that comes out of school is the core reason why students need breaks. Spring break, summer break, winter break all help students reward themselves after months of hardcore material and tests. Without breaks, students would be slowly developing higher stress levels, losing sleep and focus, something very unhealthy for a teenager’s body.

Spring break, for instance, is a week-long break that students can use to fully recuperate and feel saner before walking into the school gates the following week. Students gain multiple benefits by having spring breaks and throughout this article, trust me, you will find yourself wanting to stay in a break for longer than a week.

The definition of a break is “a pause in work or during an activity or an event.” If we continue to dissect the meaning of this, a break simply means a rest. Teachers assign homework over break, making students lose their amount of rest time. Why is spring break called a break if there is still work assigned? Sure, the homework may be “easy” but at the end of the day, students will still feel the anxiety to finish it whether it is “easy” or not. Sure, the homework was to keep the students still in class mentally and to avoid any loss of information. Well, I’m sure, and I know other students would say the same thing: regardless of the amount of work in every class, the amount of sleep you lose combined with the amount of stress you have will eventually result

A study made by Brown University School of Medicine recommended that high school students should sleep nine hours each day in order to stay attentive the next day. However, after conducting a survey that included around 3,000 high school students, the researchers have found that, on average, students, only sleep about 7.5 hours, on school nights respectively. Sleep deprivation is a serious issue and the overload of homework is contributing to this. Students should not be finding themselves staying up until 1 a.m. to finish their work, but staying comfortably in their beds, eyes shut. With a break, you can sleep in and enjoy the morning in your bed all snuggled up in blankets and pillows.

The study further shows that the teenage circadian rhythms are delayed by around two hours, resulting in a difficult struggle to get up every single morning. This can lead to a decline in performance, memory lapses and mood swings, as well as behavioral problems. There seems to be a similar outcome out of assigning work over break, so everyone should just take a break. We all need it.

With that, breaks are essential to have in the student life. Without it, there would be no room to live the life you want to live. I am not saying to just ditch school and go on a nice school break for the rest of your life. I am saying that students have worked hard to stay on task and think outside the box. It is about time for them to reward not just their mind, but their body.