Winter is here and the temperature seems to go from kinda warm to freezing cold within the same day. Now we have to actually check the weather these days to make sure that we have a proper outfit for the day, but honestly not many people seem to care about being underdressed for the cold at our school, me included, and the weather makes it harder to get out of bed pretty much every day. We’re eager for winter break, and despite the fact that we’re getting closer to it, it seems so far away. For seniors, it’s even worse because there’s that ever present though of, “Why am I still here?”

I know senioritis has hit early for most of us in the class of 2020. I know we’re tempted to slack off and not pay attention in class because we’re way too tired or lazy to. Our teachers are throwing a lot of stuff onto us to work on, like projects, notes, and online activities and it’s super overwhelming, so much so that we wonder if it would really hurt to get a failing grade by not putting effort into whatever they’re assigning us. But I ask that all of us stay strong despite that. It’s our last year here, and when you think about it, it’s gone by surprisingly fast even with all of the school work and stress from life in general getting piled onto us.

Let winter break be your main motivator to do your best these remaining school days–and I’m not just telling this to seniors specifically. I know it’s hard to resist the urge to just give up right now and deal with all of the school nonsense after break, but that’s the thing, you’re handling it all after break, or even worse, during it. We have several weeks of doing literally nothing school-wise, so why ruin it by working on things you could have finished a long time ago? It’s hard work to muster up the drive to do all of this, but the payoff will be worth it in the end. 

Even though I’m struggling to type up this column because I want to take a three year long nap, I’m doing it anyway because I know I’ll be stressing over it if I miss my usual deadline and at the same time will be piling more work onto the hard-working editors that look over my columns.

I feel crazy guilty every time I turn in a column a day before my deadline (and I did the same thing with this one, unfortunately) and because of that I’m going to make the effort to do it three days before the deadline next week. Why? Because I don’t want to do any more Wingspan work the rest of the week and I definitely don’t want to do it on winter break, which is a time where I get to do absolutely nothing in peace. You can use your laziness to your advantage by telling yourself that you’ll have three weeks to be lazy so long as you get all of your work done this week and the next.

So stay strong, students. We’re so close to freedom. You’ve just got to work through the week to get to it.