As the holiday season approaches, students should be able to relax and spend more time with family. However, the school system doesn’t sympathize for the feelings of missing out of holiday traditions.

It would make sense that students shouldn’t have to study for a test every night the week before Christmas break. But sadly, I have had one quiz, one essay, three tests, and about half of the sleep I should have had in the past three days.

Now this is pretty normal for a workload in a week, but when it occurs during a week when holiday shopping ends and the festivities begin, it just seems unfair.

Students should be spending time with family and the siblings who are coming home for the holidays, but instead, most are stuck in their rooms for hours after school buried in homework while faintly hearing Buddy travel through NYC in search for his father in the living room below.

Numerous times in the past couple weeks, my mom has asked me if I wanted to finish up my Christmas shopping one day after school. “You probably won’t be that busy since it’s your last week before break,” she exclaimed. Well she was wrong. Everyday this past week I have been up late finishing homework, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

In some ways, the busy week before break makes sense. “[The teachers] are trying to cram everything in so when we forget everything [over break,] they don’t slam us with major assessments rights when we get back,” Camryn Kelbaugh (’18) said.

And this makes perfect sense, but I believe that the importance of family values and traditions override the importance of the 20 minutes of classwork a quiz will take when we return from break.

During this holiday season, I was missing out on my cookie baking tradition, and shopping with my sister, and decorating the Christmas tree, and that was a terrible feeling. So I think teachers and the school system should recognize that family is more important than school.