Opinion | Stopping is not an option

 Breaks give us the perfect opportunity to step back from our school work and recharge so we can come back well-rested and ready to work again. Except sometimes we don’t get a chance to relax. And sometimes the problem is that we don’t let ourselves. Illustration by WYATT LINCOLN, illustrator

Fall break gives us a perfect chance to sit back and relax before the last three weeks of the semester, right? 

Wrong. 

If we're being honest, Thanksgiving break is stressful for a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons. Whether it be from having to cook the whole dinner or host family in your house, Thanksgiving alone can be a major source of stress. But we're college students, so this isn't our situation. Our stress comes from other places. 

Not only do we have to answer questions from our family members about our plans for the future, which we don't always know how to answer because we're still figuring it out, but we are also thinking about all the things we'll have to do when we get back from break.

Emilia Cuevas Diaz, opinions editor

During break, I had so many things on my mind, and I couldn't seem to make them stop. I was constantly thinking about all the assignments, presentations, finals and discussion posts, my work for The Panther and the other projects outside school.

Additionally, I kept thinking about how I had to clean the bathroom and rearrange the fridge because things didn't fit anymore. My room was a mess (still is). I had to pack my suitcase and still needed to do my laundry. 

I didn't technically have to do anything. Nothing was due. The fridge wasn't something that needed to happen at that moment. I had enough clean clothes to last me for a little over a week and I didn't have to work on the newspaper's layout until after break.

I made a decision to relax for the first day or two of break and then work for the other two days I had at Chapman before I went to visit my family for Thanksgiving celebrations. 

The first day I woke up late for the first time in weeks. I made breakfast and sat on the couch to catch up on some TV shows and have fun. 

I didn't.

Instead of relaxing and letting my mind shut down for a couple hours, the moment I turned on Netflix, I started thinking about all the things I could be doing instead. All the things I should be doing. 

I kept thinking about the assignments and the cleaning I felt like I had to be doing instead of allowing myself to have some time to have fun and unwind. And the longer I tried to ignore those thoughts, the louder they seemed to get

It felt like all these items on my to-do list were screaming at me to get up and work.

I ended the day incredibly exhausted, beating myself up for losing an entire day without doing anything productive. And the next day, I just repeated the exact same cycle. 

Wake up, sit down to relax, stress about not being productive, end the day worse than it started.

By the third day, when I was actually planning to work, I was just so worn out and unmotivated that doing the things I had planned took so much more energy than I had anticipated. I had to force myself to do the work because if I didn't follow through with my plan, I would fall behind and be even more stressed later. 

The irony is that I started stressing myself out during break so I didn't have to be as stressed later, which didn't work. 

By the end of break, I still had the same amount of work to do, but I was more tired and stressed. I didn't allow myself to take a break and recharge from the constant pressure of all my responsibilities, which ended up being worse. Classes were restarting and I was already so incredibly worn out that getting out of bed felt like this huge challenge.

At some point in my life, I internalized the idea that if I'm not being productive. I'm wasting my time. And this is such a prominent sentiment in our society. We've gotten to the point where toxic positivity is not only the usual but almost aspirational. 

If I'm not well-rested or if I don't have fun every once in a while, my mental state deteriorates. Eventually, that doesn't just make me far less productive but makes it harder to enjoy life in general. 

I need to unlearn this idea that resting is wasting my time. And I have a feeling I'm not the only one who does.