Whether you’re hanging out with friends or laying out by the beach, there’s nothing quite as relaxing as spring break. The reprieve from the heavy workload just in time for warmer weather is rivaled only by winter break. You’re at bliss, finally able to relax and take a breather after a couple of long months. The week couldn’t have come at a better time. Then, suddenly, that tropical oasis becomes a classroom once more. You’re back to school, with two more months of work hitting you like a freight train as you struggle to simultaneously keep up with your classes and study for AP tests. 

March is simultaneously the best and the worst month. It contains a reprieve from the stress, yet when that’s over, you are thrown directly back into the stress and chaos of the school year. But even worse than that, the clock is ticking until the end of the school year. For many students, it’s a race against time until the AP exams. Even though they’re still in the relaxed mentality of the break, they have to be thrown back into the race to the AP exams, where students have a little more than a month to take their exams over everything they learned from the entire year.

Managing the speed towards the AP exams might have been manageable if it wasn’t for the fact that spring break cuts directly into that time, and the goals that students have been striving toward are suddenly in the back of their minds. Students rush toward their goals, but the break comes and demolishes many students’ motivation and ability to push forward. The taste of no school that spring break provided is overwhelming, and it is all students can think about. Instead of resuming the workload they had before school began, their minds are geared toward getting out of school. Any prior motivation students had completely dissolves. The number one objective shifts from maintaining solid grades and studying for exams to finishing the semester and getting to relish in the lack of school that spring break only hinted at. 

How can students combat this, especially since the idea has strayed further and further from their minds? Unfortunately, there’s no foolproof option to refocus students’ priorities and keep them working. Students may try studying for exams in groups because then maybe one person can keep them on track. Or, students could purchase books to prepare for AP exams. It just depends on what works for them. All students can do is buckle up and bear in mind that the only way out is to get through it.