S T A T E M E N T

6— Wednesday, March 29, 2023
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

“Breaks always come right 
when you need them”– a wise 
person once told me this. Over 
the course of my college career, 
I’ve heard this phrase time and 
time again, whether it be courtesy 
of similarly stressed university 
students 
counting 
down 
the 
days until winter break, or a 
chanting placation in my own 
head. Regardless, it seems as 
though the difficulties in my life 
get egregiously worse right before 
the inevitable release of break. 
And given that this “wise person” 
was, to my knowledge, non-
possessing of psychic abilities, 
this final-stretch phenomenon 
is applicable to many, if not all, 
college students.
It always seems, by some odd 
coincidence, that the grueling 
weeks leading up to a break are not 
the typical breed of grueling that 
college students are begrudgingly 
accustomed to: assignments that 
seem to stretch on longer than 
hours in a day, loud roommates, 
critical parents saying your major 
is “obsolete” and “why can’t you 
just be a doctor or something 
useful?”. Perhaps that last part 

is just a me-problem. Regardless, 
hidden in the fine print of our 
commitment to university is the 
typical gruel and drag that is 
college life. But the days or weeks 
leading up to a break? That’s a 
special kind of torture.
Right 
before 
the 
typical 
school break comes to relieve 
the anxieties and pressures I feel 
as a college student, I experience 
a very unique, particular type 
of angst. I call it the “pre-break 
angst.” When I know that in five, 
four, three days I’m going to be 
released from the swarm of social 
and academic stressors, somehow 
all my problems seem to hit me 
with the force of a Mack truck. 
All of a sudden, my workload is 
suffocating my already barren 
social life, or I make a super snippy 
retort back to that friend who’s 
been making subtle digs at me all 
February long or, more likely, a 
very creative combination of the 
two that somehow still includes 
the original dilemma of the loud 
roommate. 
This 
loop 
of 
heightened 
emotion and accumulation of 
stress only seems to be on such a 
highly concentrated repeat right 
before the anticipated end that 
comes with break. But why does 
the week right before break seem 

to be such a tumultuous time for 
college students?
It’s easy to chalk it up to 
course load. There is definitely 
a correlation; during the week 
before 
break, 
more 
popularly 
dubbed “midterms” or “finals 
week,” 
assignments 
are 
more 
strenuous and demand more time 
and energy. We pound information 
into our heads as we study, then 
flesh it all out with a fine-toothed 
comb on our exams. Naturally 
we wouldn’t be of the most sound 
mind when undergoing the brain-
numbing study routine that comes 
with midterms or finals week. 
Moreover, the effects of this high-
pressure period bleed into other 
aspects of our lives such as, say, 
our relationships with friends, 
our families or significant others, 
causing seemingly new problems 
that plague our minds until the 
metaphorical school bell rings. But 
really, I think these problems were 
always there. 
My roommate will always be 
loud. That’s a fact I’ve had to accept 
from the beginning. But these 
seemingly 
newfound 
problems 
that rub me the wrong way — 
innocent jokes at my expense, 
being crushed by the weight of my 
academic commitments or feeling 
excluded from a group of friends 

— aren’t as newfound as they seem. 
They are often very indicative of 
more visceral problems which 
have simply been laying under 
the radar until this catalytic point 
of exposure. And during that 
hallowed week before break, I feel 
like I’m going to explode from all of 
the pressure. 
The knowledge, or rather the 
notion, that all of our problems 
will come to an end in a few days’ 
time allows us to express and feel 
our emotions with less inhibitions 
or perceived “realness” attached 
to them. Especially since the 
week before break is already a 
time 
of 
undeniable 
academic 
stress, it’s very easy to assume 
a sense of direct relation with 
other elements of stress during 
this time and disregard these 
so-called heightened emotions, 
chalking them up to the damning 
circumstance 
of 
pre-break. 
Pennsylvania 
State 
University 
Biobehavioral Health Professor 
Jennifer 
Graham-Engeland 
is 
currently researching the effects 
of academic stress, such as a period 
of exams, on college students’ 
mental health and has found that 
the prolonged period of exam week 
can severely exacerbate mental 
health as students experience a 
drastic shift in academic pressure. 

This 
almost 
ubiquitous 
level 
of academic stress is certainly 
making way for other stressors 
and negative reactions to manifest, 
but it is merely a component rather 
than the source of most turmoil.
During the week before a break, 
I’ve gotten into little spats with 
friends, both said and received 
some unkind things with my 
roommate or bawled in the UgLi 
at ungodly hours of the night. But 
the minute break begins, these 
problems dissipate and the slate is 
wiped clean. I feel rejuvenated — 
fresh as a daisy — and ready to get 
back into the swing of things now 
that my alleged irrational phase 
of emotions has passed. Thank 
goodness that whole situation is 
over, right? Wrong.
Break will come and go, and 
in one-to-two months’ time, it’s 
the week before break all over 
again and, surprise, my conflict 
resolution has not gotten any 
better. The same problems will 
resurface again and my eyes will 
feel sore from an underwhelming 
lack of sleep, crying or rolling 
them at my friends who, for some 
odd reason, just seem to be pissing 
me off extra. At the time, these 
problems seem to derive from an 
accumulation of stress, but really 
the roots of the problems are 

innate, propelling this seemingly 
inescapable loop. 
Though such issues seem to 
arise at full capacity during this 
pre-break phase, my inarguably 
taxing workload (despite not being 
a doctor) and sense of insecurity 
within friendships was always 
present. These problems were just 
buried under my stronger, heavier 
fear of confronting them. The 
answer was clear: This period of 
pre-break was my way of finally 
acknowledging the problems and 
painful feelings that felt too big for 
me to unpack regularly. And the 
magical clean slate that occurred 
after I rendered these emotions 
as invalid and circumstantial was 
just my excuse for not confronting 
these very real, very rational 
issues. I allowed myself to be 
afraid of these emotions and let 
them build up until they inevitably 
exploded. The explosion and all of 
its debris would stay on campus 
and, by the time I came back, it 
would all be forgotten. And then 
of course, I always chided myself 
for letting the common stress of 
midterms and finals plague me and 
my personal life yet again. After 
all, breaks always come right when 
you need them, right? 

IRENA TUTUNARI
Statement Columnist 

School’s out! Your stress isn’t

Design by Emma Sortor

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