Spring break is defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “a week’s vacation for students.” This, I feel, does not adequately express the joy that I felt over this year’s break. It’s not merely just a week’s vacation, but rather a wonderful, exciting period of time during which I got the chance to catch up on all of my work, smile nostalgically while poring over my AP guidebooks, and try to remember everything that I’ve learned over these past eight months.

Walking around school the Friday before break started, I heard some completely unjustified complaints from students: they had been assigned a load of homework so large that they felt as if they wouldn’t be able to relax at all. However, that was definitely not the case for me. To me, nothing was more stress-relieving than the feeling of coming home that Friday to a pile of shiny, new AP review books.

From then on, my spring break just got better and better! While I received offers from my friends asking if I wanted to study with them, I politely refused. After all, my fun would be spoiled if I were to share this invigorating experience with others.

I soon developed a daily routine: wake up, have some Cheerios, pick a subject and study that until lunch, resume reviewing after lunch and work until dinner, then continue after dinner until the words began to blur in front of my eyes. It was complete bliss!

Nothing is better than the intense pressure that develops when AP testing nears: that chest-tightening feeling you get when you realize that you don’t recognize a term or concept, the exhilarating sensation you get when you look it up and it all comes rushing back to you, the wonderfully tired chuckles that you let out when you realize that even after six hours of work, there’s still more material that you can enjoy going over in the coming days. What could be better?

Occasionally, I would suddenly feel extremely worried that I was almost done reviewing and that I would be forced to do something unexciting like taking a nap or watching TV. Words could not describe the relief I felt when I realized that I wouldn’t have to worry about running out of material for the foreseeable future.

However, it seemed as if the entire world was against me, because I was constantly interrupted! For example, my mom forced me to “take a break” and go out with her to lunch. Silly woman, didn’t she know that I was already taking a break? I had books on various topics and at least four notebooks covering every inch of my desk; what part of that doesn’t scream, “relaxing?”
I’d like to thank each and every one of my teachers for all the work I’ve been able to do over spring break. It truly means a lot to me that our teachers care enough to create and assign homework assignments.

Now that spring break is over, I must say that I feel a little sad. Now I have to go to school every day and suffer through eight interminably long hours in different classrooms, which isn’t nearly as fun. But at least I had those nine days to relax, right?