Eight...seven...six...five… The second hand ticked down the final seconds of the school year and every student sat quietly waiting for the bell to ring out releasing them into the bright sun. Everyone had plans. Some were heading to a summer camp. Others would be lounging around on the beach perfecting their tans. I, myself, had plans to spend days on the lake fishing and kayaking and just plain out relaxing. In fact, everyone I knew was planning on relaxing.

But we couldn’t. Why? That stack of papers and books the teachers gave us the very last week after all the finals. Summer work. And I don’t mean one or two books either. My stack entitled reading the beginning of a textbook, taking notes, and writing three essays on the chapters; reading another book and answering paragraph length essays about it; reading half of another book and answer questions; defining a list of words; reading two more books, analyzing them, and then answering essay questions; doing a project using the news in which we were to read newspaper articles, analyze them, write a minimum one page reaction paper per each, and post our findings each week on a blog.

I am drowned in work having a single chapter last close to two hours. And, normally during the school year, I wouldn’t mind having so much work. But this is summer vacation. This is the only time of the year in which we students get a break. The time when we can go only family vacations and not have to worry about the internet signal to turn our assignments in on time. The time when we can rest our heads for a while so that we don’t go insane. The time when we get to hang around with friends, enjoy the sun, and do the things we pushed off all school year. But, once again, everything has to be pushed off for the sake of school work.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why they give us work, but so much that we don’t have a second to ourselves? Sometimes we need a break before we all collapse into balls of stress and burn out entirely. Besides, the teachers have their summers off. Shouldn’t we too?