A view of the University of Kansas, a college many students tour over spring break.
Photo Credit: University of Kansas
Spring break is important for students and faculty to recharge and return to the fourth quarter ready to finish the year strong. While many Kansas City schools have a one-week break, Barstow’s spring break lasts two weeks, from March 14 to March 25. This extra time can go towards relaxing, catching up with friends, or, for many juniors, thinking about their future.
“Touring colleges helped me narrow down what I want and don’t want in college,” said junior Erin Spence.
Many call junior year the “most important” year of high school because it is the last academic year before applying to college. This makes it generally the hardest and busiest year.
Junior Anita Mohan commented that “Junior year is a lot more stressful, not even just with the workload but also with expectations.”
Getting accepted into college is becoming increasingly competitive, and students are expected to take difficult courses while balancing extracurriculars and social life.
For instance, many students take on a harder course load their junior year, often including more than one college-level Advanced Placement class. Some of the most popular ones for juniors this year are AP Chemistry, Environmental Science, English Language, United States History, and Calculus AB. AP courses culminate in May with the AP exams, a test that determines eligibility for college credit for the respective course.
With the proximity of the AP exams, many test prep services like the Princeton Review advise that students start preparing for the tests 1-3 months before. This places spring break in the middle of this test-prep time.
In addition to these exams, many juniors have to worry about preparing for college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT.
College counselors have advised juniors to also tour some colleges over spring break. This is a good time to look into colleges and make a list of schools you are interested in.
Junior Brett Gieras toured colleges in the United Kingdom over spring break. Gieras said, “It was really interesting. There isn’t much college recruitment to these colleges. It’s more just reaching out to the people who work at the school. Colleges are different there in that the colleges are spread out around the town. Overall, I enjoyed the trip and seeing colleges.”
All this discussion of college can be stressful, and having multiple tests on one’s mind during the vacation can take away from the benefits of spring break. While mental decompression is a main benefit of spring break, overworking oneself can hinder relaxation.
Ways to relax and enjoy your spring break can include connecting with friends and family, picking up a new hobby, going outside, exercising, and getting enough sleep.
Amanda Quintanilla, the Barstow counselor, said that “a lot of students will try to study [for standardized tests] and spend lots of time adding those study habits to their school homework habits…It seems like there are not enough hours in the day, and that tends to eat away at the hours we get for sleep. So it seems like a really difficult thing to do, but if students can actually get solid hours of sleep, even one more hour, it can help.”
These tips can also be applied to everyone, not just juniors. While thinking about your academic future is important, it is vital to recharge this spring break and do things you enjoy.
