Four summative assessments. Six worksheets. 1 science fair. 200 pages to annotate. Seven days. After countless sleepless nights and many metal breakdowns later, the least teachers owe to students is a few days to unwind and recharge from the stresses of school. Unfortunately, this is far from the reality students nationwide face over breaks.

Both students and teachers alike constantly complain about piling mountains of work. However, this trend never seems to end (Period.) (W)e’re stuck in a constant cycle of making up for lost time with unnecessary assignments. Ironically teachers tend to ironically assign more homework over a break than a regular school week. Is this even necessary or beneficial to the success of students?

Walking down the halls the week before a break and you can count dozens, even hundreds of mentally and psychologically drained students, even faculty. If you were to re-count the day after school was back in session, you would yield the exact same results. Breaks have lost their true meaning as a time to rejuvenate with teachers assigning an absurd amount of pointless assignments.

What teachers fail to realize is that students shockingly have a life outside of the seven hours spent every five days in quarantine from the rest of the world, while being forced-fed 35 different vocabulary words at one time. I am sick and tired of being rewarded for my hard work with an even larger amount of tasks.

At this point, I have accepted the fact that this endless cycle will sadly never end. Although North Atlanta’s administration has attempted to decrease the ever-increasing workload by reaching out to teachers, nothing seems to work. Just this week, I have been assigned 30 pages of annotations, five textbook assignments and much more to come. Hopefully teachers will realize the unnecessary burdens and stress that homework assignments create over a so-called “break.”