Winter break workaholics

One night over winter break, a few days after arriving home, I had the privilege of serving as my high school girlfriends' designated driver. They were celebrating the end of their semester at the local university and the subsequent five weeks of freedom from academic work. As I wandered around the party with a cup of Coke in hand, explaining to acquaintance upon acquaintance that my finals were yet to come, the refrain was constant: "I'm so glad my school finishes finals before break."

The merits and faults of the current Princeton calendar have been discussed ad nauseam. Never having experienced the crunch of papers and exams in mid-December, I cannot fairly judge the relative merits of the two arrangements. Maybe a frantic week or two before the holidays is not preferable to the more leisurely post-break finals period that allows one, if so inclined, to stretch the work out over a month or more. Some students do a remarkable job of resisting the urge to expand work to fill all available time, but for others who carry a suitcase full of paper onto the plane there's no escape. This tendency of Princeton students to carry their assignments home is a real implication of our academic schedule. While we are supposedly at home for the holidays, papers and exams still hover over our heads. Time not spent working is time guiltily spent. We come back to our families still tied to our books, present in body but not in mind.

There are rationalizations, of course. I thought my choice to do Chinese homework on Christmas Day to be a natural variation on the Jewish tradition requiring a dinner outing to a Chinese restaurant. Getting work done at home means a more relaxed reading period, time both to sleep and to enjoy the action at the Street. However, this continuation of work into our personal time promotes the development of poor habits for later in life. Without having noticed, we've begun to tread dangerously close to the territory of workaholics.

A student's life by definition lacks a clear separation between "work" and "not." Time spent in classes, with friends, sleeping, eating, studying and laboring for pay jumbles together into the great chaos that is the college schedule. The only division that remains is that of term time and break, a distinction the Princeton academic calendar erodes. Once transitioned from student to adult life, trappings such as textbooks and notes give way to cell phones and email, but the effect of these interruptions is the same: work is allowed to encroach upon what is supposed to be free time.

The ability to separate time on the clock from time off the clock is essential both for maintaining relationships with family and friends and for finding personal contentment independent of one's career. Princeton students who spend little time at home may disappoint those who are so excited to see them when they arrive with stacks of books and a busy study schedule. Worse, students may return for reading period more exhausted than when they left school after the twelve-week semester.

Ultimately, it is the individual's responsibility to keep some segment of his life independent from work. However, the fact that academic pressure continues throughout winter break makes creating such a separation difficult. Students often feel compelled to concentrate upon schoolwork to the exclusion of their families or to the detriment of their relaxation.

In this case, winter break is not a pause. Work runs from early September until late January, and after a brief week of respite, we plunge into the whirlwind of spring semester, not to pause again until Houseparties, Dead Week and Reunions. Princeton students are known to work hard and play hard, but they should be able to set time aside just for play. The Princeton academic schedule is an early introduction to a problem central to adult life. Emily Stolzenberg is a sophomore from Morgantown, W. Va. She can be reached at estolzen@princeton.edu.