Is having no holiday breaks affecting students?
At USD this fall semester, students will not receive any three-day weekend breaks due to COVID-19. This is to help prevent traveling and seeing others who might be at risk with COVID.
Not only is USD doing this procedure but other schools around the world are so they can maintain a safe school environment for their staff and students. Breaks being canceled this semester can raise the stress students have on their schoolwork.
When I first heard about our short breaks being canceled, I did not think much of it and figured it would be fine considering we get a long Thanksgiving/Christmas break. Missing these short breaks have been inconvenient for my mental health by not getting a three or four day weekend to catch up.
Having a holiday break almost every month was a nice thing to know because of school or work being off but school is in session until Thanksgiving.
Another thing to consider when having no breaks is, we do not get to celebrate or respect the holiday that supposed to be on that day we now have school. I almost feel like this is disrespecting the holiday and everyone who celebrates it.
No breaks this semester has been a new experiment across the world, and it is affecting the student’s motivation in class. Having classes and homework back to back can get annoying and tiring for a student.
When students do not get breaks, they just make their work sloppy just to get it done. If students do get holiday breaks, they have an extra day to catch up on sleep, homework, work or anything. Catching up on work can help ease the stress and make a student focus better on what is to come the next week. Breaks can help relieve stress, create more time with family, and make fun plans for a weekend.
Some misleading information about no breaks is that is proven that people need a longer vacation than a three-day weekend to transition to a relaxing mode. After the break, we then need to transition back to school which can be hard to find the motivation for.
