Imagine lying on a beach with your feet burrowed into the sand, the sun shining, the waves crashing onto the shore. You close your eyes, taking in the warmth of the sun, only worrying about getting tan.

Suddenly a thought pops into your head—exams. Soon, thousands of stressful odds and ends stampede through your brain: an enormous math packet, the stack of assignments due next week and the hours upon hours you’ll need to study for your looming midterms.

Exams should be scheduled before winter break so that students can truly enjoy the holidays and their week off away from the high-pressure, academic environment. Exams before break would allow students to relax and decompress after completing a challenging semester.

Throughout the semester, students spend many a waking moment stressing over school. Our one saving grace is winter break. But the joy of the holiday season is dampened because immediately after it there’s just one measly week of school before exams begin.

Students can forget critical class material during their holiday break because of the current schedule, which can adversely affect a student’s performance on his or her exams. Unless students spend time studying during break (haha), they will need to cram in additional hours to relearn material they forgot during the vacation.

Review week is an insufficient amount of time to recollect all the lost material spilled out during the brain drain of break. In fact, most teachers don’t even use review week to review. There is only one official review day on the Friday before exams.

In addition, the existing system only allows students a few days off after exams before starting the process all over again second semester. This counteracts exactly what winter break is supposed to be about: relaxing and decompressing from the past semester. It never allows students to be work-free and have a mind free of assignments.

Implementing a new system would allow students to use winter break as a time to relax after a long semester, rejuvenate after a long week of exams and get mentally prepared for the upcoming semester.

So this year during winter break, as I reclined on the beach and dug my feet into the silky sand, this issue disturbed my attempt at relaxation in paradise. If exams were before break, it would alleviate a large amount of weight from our always-building mountain of stress.