“Hey, what’s up?”

“Ugh…midterms.”

We’ve all heard the same question and response for the past week or so. With all of the essays, projects and exams being thrown at us right now, we could really use a break. But guess what? We don’t get one.

This year, Fall Break was unceremoniously taken from us. And we want it back.

We realize the benefits of having a longer Thanksgiving Break. Students who live farther away don’t have to shell out for a plane ticket home twice in the span of two months. But they’ll have to fly home again for Winter Break anyway, and that’s only a few weeks after Thanksgiving! And who said racking up frequent flyer miles was a bad thing?

The logic doesn’t hold up when you consider that the timespan between Thanksgiving Break and Winter Break is much shorter than the one between Fall Break and Thanksgiving Break.

It just doesn’t make sense to tack Fall Break onto Thanksgiving. The fact is many of us didn’t travel home for Fall Break. We used it to rest up in order to survive the remainder of the semester or used the time to travel with our friends. Thanksgiving and Winter Breaks were our family time. Fall Break was for us.

Students cannot just keep going like the Energizer Bunny. Students need time off. We are trucking through the semester, but we are fading. We’re not exactly going strong here!

Fall Break would have given us a chance to recharge our batteries and maybe see some of our friends from other schools who were on Fall Break, too. Instead, we got to spend the weekend studying and getting phone calls from those friends asking where we were.

When we told our friends that we didn’t get a Fall Break, their most common response was, “That’s lame.”

Honestly, we couldn’t have said it better.

We’re tired, stressed out and not looking forward to trudging through the rest of the semester. So, please, track down your student senators and tell them you want your break back!