And so the story goes, infamous Junior Year has taken over another aspect of my life.

Spring Break is coming up in one week from the moment I sit here and write this article, but I don't see it as a week off from the stress that this year is throwing my way. Instead, I see the next few schooldays as a huge, winding rollercoaster that never stops moving up and down, and the break that follows them is just an extension of the studying going into the preparation for taking on the ride.

I'm so tired this week, and when I walked in on Monday morning, expecting to be greeted by cheerful classmates who got enough rest over the weekend, all of us actually mirrored each other's facial expressions. We were exhausted beyond belief, completely consumed by the idea and details of the week before Spring Break. Everyone knows that the rest of the school year after this one-week long break is a hectic disaster, but no one mentions the week before it, a nightmare of its own.

Not to mention that the tests and quizzes are piling on, and final exams are beginning much sooner than I had originally anticipated. It's not a feeling of helplessness that's weighing on any of us, but it's that sense of waiting for impending chaos to take place and of having time slowly creep toward another doomsday that throws us off our routines.

In the midst of the week before Spring Break and the month after Spring Break comes Spring Break, a theoretically-magical week of no cares and a celebration of no consequences but an actual buffer before life hits harder than it ever has before. And this year, as a junior, Spring Break is just going to be an excuse for me to stay inside my room and surround myself with textbooks even more than before.

It's scary to think about now itself, but when the time comes, how rewarding will it be to study so much? How useful will one week of cramming be? Is it worth losing a week off school to prepare for school?

Tonight is the Wednesday before Spring Break, and in two weeks marks my first final exam. So how does the formula lay itself out? I have a bit over a week to go over a year of material and just hope that my brain works on the day of the test.

Being a junior is like watching a livestream that lags a few seconds behind reality, watching every event unfold before you can do anything to stop the situation. First semester wasn't particularly special in terms of difficulty, but April and May sure are beginning to look like what high schoolers fear. The perfect combination of work, work and work mixed together in a boiling cauldron.

Spring Break to a junior, though, is heaven. It really is. A week to study, regardless of how useful studying so close to a test would actually be, sounds like a dream. And considering the fact that AP Exams, EOCs and final exams are all taking place at exactly the same time, it's no wonder Spring Break is so necessary.

Spring Break to a freshman, sophomore or maybe even a senior (granted, many seniors use it to study, too) is a time to vacation and escape reality. Spring Break to a junior is a chance to delve into the intricacies of reality, dissecting each seemingly-impossible section of life to understand what makes it so difficult.

So now that the surface-level complaining is finished through and through, it's time to say goodbye to the relaxed junior and say hello to the junior that every rising underclassman hears horror stories about being.