Winter Break (A review)

07 Jan, 2025

With school starting tomorrow, I figured now is the time to summarize how winter break has gone. Considering that I'm also in grade 12, meaning I graduate next year and leave high school, really, this is the last real "break" that I have from school¹.

Part $\sqrt{1}$: Expectations vs Reality

Winter break is two weeks long. And ideally, those two weeks are spent relaxing, reading, traveling, partying, basically doing anything and everything orthogonal to school. Yet unfortunately, we live in reality. And what that means is that rather than spending our time freely and liberally on things that we teenagers want to do, we inevitably find ourselves with an idle mind as we prepare for school -- the very thing that winter break is supposed to not be about.
Whether that be making up work, doing some random class for the sake of "getting ahead" in the school game, sleeping more anticipating we won't get any, or simply still anxious about our grades, winter break in reality is far from what we hold in our expectations -- we are invariably connected to school even when we are given time off.

Part $\sqrt{2}$: An examination of school

Perhaps that is simply consequence of the fact that a student's "job" is to go to school. I put job in quotation marks as this connection is never explicitly acknowledged, yet that simply feels like what's happening. In Freire's² view, students are like bank accounts and teachers as depositors -- the teacher's role is to deposit money (information) into these bank accounts, and these bank accounts simply hold the information until withdrawal (whether that be tests or socratic seminars³ are held), without needing to consider the actual money that's inside them. Like a bank account, students are simply expected to hold information and to be able to access that information. What that information means is irrelevant, and simply possessing that information is enough.

Best of all, after a year of learning, we can forget everything, and we can metaphorically withdraw everything in our bank account and simply toss our hard earned gains aside. Furthermore, the final product -- the thing that society⁴ seems to care about -- is a grade. It's not learning, it's not growth, it's a grade. It's not you they care about; it's a number.

Bestest of all, some of our teachers⁵ expect and maybe even assume that our knowledge has deteriorated, giving us (students) even more reason to forget everything we have learned.

Part $\sqrt{3}$: Reality

With all that being said (my bad that was probably a little depressing), taking a look at how reality plays out, many find winter break a time to relax, but not fully relax. The school game still looms over everyone's heads (and minds), and some further play the school game over break. Which (arguably) is not a bad thing. At least it's better than consuming content............ oh wait that's what I've been doing uh oh

Part $\sqrt{4}$: My winter school hiatus.

For the first 1.5 weeks, I finished up my college applications, and submitted everything 12/31. For the 0.5 weeks after that, I started reading, and actually played my trumpet for a bit. This weekend, robotics has started and today has sorta been preparation for school and a way to tie up loose ends.

Notably, I've continued my habit of reading, started recording all the ways in which I spend time in a day (by documenting it), and have spent more time idling around simply thinking. I've also written a few blog posts :p

Unfortunately, I have not coded as much as I would've liked to over break, and probably spent way too much time playing mobile games and eating up content that I've already forgotten by this point. Sigh.

Part $\sqrt{5}$: Reflection

Overall, I have enjoyed my winter break. Although I have not spent every moment enjoying break and breaking, I have broken through the conventional norm of not relaxing and have found myself just simply idling around. It's been a good winter break (it always usually is) and with it fading away, there's nothing I can really do except plow ahead and enjoy its last remaining moments.

School starts tomorrow. And when tomorrow's school day arrives, us seniors will wonder where all our high school years went as we stumble into the endgame. The endgame of high school, and the prequel before official adulthood.
I damn sure hope my fellow classmates aren't going to show up tomorrow like zombies - their energy already fully drained from the college app gauntlet.

With that being written, I give Winter Break 4/5 stars.
(Update: After returning to school, Winter Break deserves 4.2/5 stars.)