Why I Hate Breaks From School
Annika Fisher-Eddy (she/they)
Editorial Team Member
Something a lot of people don’t realize is how stressful breaks from school are for neurodivergent people like myself, especially those of us who are on the more anxious and neurotic side.
All of us, as a human species, both neurotypical and neurodivergent, rely on routine in our daily lives. Most of us follow a routine that is somewhere along the lines of: waking up, eating breakfast, brushing our teeth, getting dressed, going to work or school, coming home, eating dinner, and going to bed. The thing is, most neurotypical people can adapt easily to changes in their routine, and can easily find a way to structure their day without one. But neurodivergent people? We’re the opposite. One change in our routine can ruin our entire day.
I enjoy school for the most part. As a person with ADHD, I have a really hard time creating a structured routine for myself, and when I don’t have anything to do, I have a hard time coming up with tasks. I end up finding myself extremely bored, and sometimes I even become depressed. School gives me a schedule and routine, and it provides structure for me, which keeps me busy. It’s easier to have a routine when it’s given to me by someone else.
I enjoy being busy during the school day, as it keeps my mind off other things. I struggle with severe anxiety and OCD, so my brain is constantly putting irrational worries in my head. Having things to do distracts me from my worries. When I have important assignments or projects I need to work on, or need to study for a test, it gives my brain other things to think about. This is why I hate breaks from school. During breaks, I have nothing to do most of the time, and end up bored. And as I stated before, it’s really hard for me to find things to do, so I end up having a lot of empty time. So during those days over the break when I’m not on vacation and there aren’t holidays—most days during the break—I’m bored doing nothing.
This gives me a lot of time to simply think, and I end up feeling trapped in my worries. My OCD tends to get a lot worse during breaks, not only due to the anxiety from the change in my routine and the stress from the holidays, but also due to the fact that I have more time to focus on my worries. There’s nothing I have to distract me from them.
I always feel left out of the excitement at the end of the semester, because while everyone else is excited to go on break, I’m always dreading it. However, I also think I’m probably not the only one who doesn’t like breaks, and it’s just that most people don’t want to admit that because it's “embarrassing.” But to be honest, I think it’s cool to enjoy school, and it’s more embarrassing to say you don’t like it. Saying you don’t like school implies that you don’t want to get good grades or get into college. I will admit, I don’t always enjoy the workload, but to me it’s worth it to stay busy rather than letting my brain turn to mush from dying of boredom.
So an unpopular opinion of mine is: the breaks are just too long. I agree that breaks are essential in order to keep the brain fresh and prevent it from getting too tired, but we don’t need an entire one to three months of doing literally nothing. Especially since—and I know for a fact that I’m speaking for everyone on this part—our brains are literally mush when we come back from a break after not having to use them for weeks. We kinda forget everything we learned before the break by the time we come back, which makes it a whole lot harder to understand new information we’re supposed to learn. So let’s reduce breaks during the school year to one week—for winter break, for example, the break would just be from Christmas Eve to New Years’ Day—and summer break to one month. Shorter breaks would be so much better for students in general.