Perhaps for one too many times this year, we have all gone to sleep with our fingers crossed and pajamas flipped inside-out – but to no avail. For the first year in recent memory, the Patchogue-Medford School District has not had sufficient snow for a snow day.

Now this could have been a piece on the crippling effects of human-induced climate change and the intense despair from no free days to frolic in the snow; however, with spring weather approaching, I thought that it would instead be nice to look on the bright side of the situation.

In all honesty, the first few months of winter have not proven to be incredibly barren of breaks, in fact quite the opposite even without snow days. Only a few weeks after our lengthy winter break, Patchogue-Medford High School students were graced with midterm week.

Although, taking a half dozen exams is not exactly the dictionary definition of a “break”, one could argue that at least we weren’t in school that much – right? If we only ignored the agonizing stress of studying for the tests that count for 8% of our entire year, midterm week was essentially a whole week of relaxation. Even if you don’t consider midterms a week of rest, the February break was one of indisputable relaxation (unless you were a senior scrambling to complete scholarships).

Given the absence of snow days, our spring break has been extended to include Thursday, April 18th, adding up to a grand total of eleven days off. In my opinion, this is a much better deal than the spring break of 2016 where students were required to come to school on the Friday of break due to excessive use of weather-related days off.

For AP students, these eleven days will prove incredibly valuable to get grinding on studying for exams. The most notable impact of our lack of snow days must however be the unprecedentedly long Memorial Day break (a whopping six days)!

Not only do we have Memorial Day (Monday) off, our schedule has provided room for vacation on the Thursday and Friday prior to Memorial Day weekend as well as the Tuesday after Memorial Day Weekend. 

So, if you’re still dreading about the lame winter that we had, turn that smile upside-down! While you make plans for the upcoming breaks, maybe think of ways to reduce your carbon footprint so that we just might have some snow days in the future.