The gift of fall break

Next week is fall break. You may be driving home to watch movies and walk your dog at home. You may be jet-setting to an all-inclusive resort to sit on the beach and drink pina coladas. You may be strapping on your boots for a service or religious discernment trip. You may be bunkering down here on campus to work on your thesis or enjoy your room all to yourself. 

Regardless of where you are going and what you’re doing, we are all privileged with the same gift: the college break. For one week in the middle of the semester, we get to drop everything and enjoy a week doing whatever we want. In the narrow transition from one half to another, we are able to reflect on the highs and lows of our semester thus far, regroup and prepare for what is ahead. 

During my fall and spring breaks thus far, I have gone home to Naples, Florida, to lie on the beach and relive my high school existence with my parents. I have traveled to Rome, where I got to enjoy a nearly empty Sistine Chapel thanks to the tourist off-season. I’ve hiked around Yosemite with my sister and mother. I have explored (and gotten very lost) around Cuba with limited Spanish and internet. That’s all to say: I have had very fortunate and unique experiences afforded to me by my privilege and the time afforded to me. 

While I have had four idyllic weeks, that is not to say that break is always perfect. It can mean going home and navigating complex and taxing family dynamics that we are sheltered from during the semester. It can also be financially taxing as it presents new costs, like food and travel, that we don’t have to think about on campus. It can also be incredibly lonely and isolating, as we have to do without our existing social structures and regular schedules. 

For me, break beckons the mental challenge that persists throughout the semester: how can I separate the work and responsibilities of my Notre Dame existence from my personal life? Up until now, school and extracurriculars occupied their own separate spaces. I may have had homework or activities that crawled into my bedroom and weekends, but there were at least some delineations between my “student” and “free” time. 

In my college experience, such delineations are nonexistent. During the semester, school never stops. There’s no clocking in and out of “school” time and “free” time. In this messy bubble, academic, extracurricular, social and personal are so deeply intertwined physically and temporally that I find it hard to disentangle one from another. 

So, when a semester break rolls around, even as I am engaged with the luxury of something like a hike through nature or a meal with family and friends, I find it difficult to mentally separate myself from my life as a student. I feel myself reaching for the book I need to read for next week’s class or checking GroupMe to see what I have to do for my clubs. 

With all this said, the privilege of having a one-week break is not lost on me. According to Forbes, the average American gets 11 days of paid vacation per year, with many getting less or none. The working world in our country is one that never stops. As college students, we are afforded not only these two-week-long semester breaks but also Thanksgiving, winter and summer breaks. For many of us, this may be the most free time that we ever have. 

As I contemplate my future as a working adult post-college, I hold fall break close to my heart. In the years ahead, I’ll likely need to plan out PTO or even go unpaid to escape the grind of work. And if I struggle now to differentiate between my academic life and personal life, it’ll only get more complicated when family and other adult responsibilities enter the picture.

So, as fall break arrives, let’s cherish it as more than just a hiatus. Let’s recognize it as the invaluable gift it truly is.

Kat Regala is a junior studying the Program of Liberal Studies with minors in Computing and Digital Technology and Science, Technology and Values. She originally hails from Naples, Florida, but loves traveling. When not reading or writing, you can find her drinking coffee, practicing yoga or binge-watching reality television.