If there’s anything us college students can agree on it’s that college is very stressful, with every semester bringing new challenges.

With how COVID has affected how we learn here at Eastern, this is probably one of the most challenging school years to go through as a college student.

For me, I can’t seem to focus on work anymore, because I feel exhausted all the time. It’s so easy to ignore my laptop and watch back-to-back episodes of “Gilmore Girls” or take a nap or scroll through Twitter instead.

Every week starts with “I just have to get through this week” and every week ends with “next week I’ll be more productive.”

And I’m not the only one going through this.

My friends, both here at Eastern and at other universities, have expressed how especially stressful this school year has been.

Assignments, jobs, caring for family, extracurricular activities, the pandemic. We all have so many responsibilities and concerns that get too overwhelming, especially going through all that without any breaks.

EIU giving us personal wellness days instead of an actual spring break was a horrible idea.

I understand that they did it to limit COVID spreading, but the more time passes, the more I realize what a crappy decision that was. It has taken such a toll on everyone’s mental health.

College students need a real break. Not a random weekday.

Those personal wellness days are useless when students spend the day catching up or working on assignments for the next day.

They are useless when many of us take online classes now anyway. It doesn’t feel like a break from the classroom if the classroom is my laptop and my desk.

They are useless when students will definitely still find a way to have their spring break trips.

I’ll be honest: I’m not sure if having spring break would have been a better option. More than anything, I want people to stay safe from COVID, and I’m worried what spring break would have caused.

But I can’t deny how much it sucks to work for months straight with absolutely no break.

I didn’t want to have a spring break so I could party it up in Florida. Why would I even want to go to Florida?

I wanted to have a spring break so I could finally feel like I can breathe again after a long and stressful semester, and I’m angry EIU took that away from us.

Kyara Morales-Rodriguez is a junior English major. She can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].