We’re two months into 2019 and spring sports are about to start, ACT testing is starting again and we’re still struggling to get back into the swing of things. Snow days are not only a day for us to make up work we’ve been procrastinating, they’re a day for us to get thrown off. I know they throw me off a lot. When snow days happen, I forget almost everything I was supposed to do or tests I was supposed to study for. I know teachers feel the same way. They have to reschedule everything they had planned for that day and and it pushes everything back.

I look at second semester as a fresh start. Grades renew, you get new classes and you meet new people. Everytime I walk into school after winter break, I feel like it’s a whole new school year and anything’s possible, but with all the unexpected days off, it’s hard to adjust.

Second semester is like the beginning of the end. I think that’s why my classmates put so much into their resolutions. It’s our last couple of months to do good and better ourselves before summer vacation or graduation. As a junior, I’m counting down the days until I graduate, but days are adding to the end of the semester because of the large amount of snow days. We have had nine total snow days this semester and we haven’t had a full week of school yet. Lucky for seniors, this doesn’t affect them. They’re still graduating at the same time.

When the new year comes, I set a list of goals for the remaining semester. Obviously getting good grades, but I mainly make goals for my mental health. I’m taking this semester to be selfish. I know I need to work on myself and stop worrying so much about things I can’t control. I learned in AP Lang that the more people think about their goals, the less they actually work on them. I notice I say the same thing every year and I obsess over it so much that I give up if I don’t see results in a quick time frame.

So, the real question is how do we fall back into the swing of things when snow days take away a day of almost every week? Talk to or email teachers about what you can do to ensure that you remember everything you learned before the snow days so you’re not completely clueless when we come back. Try to fight the urge of falling back into the the pit of excessively watching Netflix and eating. Hopefully, we will get a full week of school in and the routine of school will return.