The snow begins to fall, a white blanket coats the ground. Thanks to Michigan weather, that snowfall soon turns into a polar vortex and that white blanket turns into a wall. Many a student, seeing that there is no possibility of having school the next morning, thanks the snow gods and goes joyfully to sleep knowing he or she will not have to wake early the next morning. I, on the other hand, stress over the pending snow day to come.

For many, snow days mean extra vacation and extra sleep in the morning. For me, snow days mean less preparation for the various tests I will have to take in May and less time to learn the material.

Despite having snow days and less educational time, my IB and AP tests will still occur on the days they are set for, regardless of whether or not I feel prepared or have covered the necessary material.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the extra sleep and spending a lazy day on the couch with my cat and some orange juice, but if I am going to get college credit and scholarship money with my test scores, I am going to need more than two days a week of school for almsot three months.

Some assignments can be done at home, the assignments assigned pre-snowpocalypse. Other assignments, like completing reading assignments and finiahing an essay, can be taken on by myself and done at home when the roads are too icy and slick to drive.

However, most of the time, the material that really needs to be covered, the difficult concepts, are buried and lost with the snow. It is the material like how a neuron fires in IB Biology and using infinite limits and summations to find the area under a curve in AP Calculus that I really need to be in school to cover.
Many would agree, the initial snow day is a pleasant break from the dreary everyday functions of a full school week, but when school becomes about just as frequent as seeing a flying saucer land in the backyard, the stress begins to accumulate.

Teachers and students alike feel the pressure as weeks of material needs to be crammed into a single class period and tests and quizzes have to be smushed together in order to save time. Some material is even cut from the class, raising serious problems.

Students should stop for a second, take a step back from turning their pajamas inside out, putting their spoons under their pillows and throwing their ice cubes down the toilet and really think about the impact a snow day has on their education.

Snow days for many mean relaxation. For me and others taking advacned classes with huge cummulative tests at the end, they epitomize the stress of winter as more and more time is shaved off of the clock and those ominous test dates come closer and closer.