Students battle to survive through school until Christmas Break

After Thanksgiving break wrapped up, students came back to Mount Carmel looking forward to the postponed State Championship game. However, after the rescheduled football game was played, many students realized that the stretch of school from Thanksgiving until Christmas is really not much. 

But why is that stretch a brutal one? For many, nothing goes on in this long period and is rather dull. On top of that, the weather and time change make conditions for arriving and departing straight-up depressing. The cold, wet, dark, snowy South Side is not a pleasant place to commute in the morning and is a hard battle for many students to take on.

Students quickly become deprived of energy and motivation for learning causing grades to take a fall. Dreading class, students' routine often involves falling asleep or playing clash royale in class. As a result, furious teachers ban devices and start handing out more write-ups than usual, only making the students less motivated for their studies. 

Now MC students are fighting just to survive through the school day.

Even treading through the hallways daily has become a chore for many. Students only look forward to the new collective favorite classes: lunch and Studium. Those classes are the only place students can shelter from long and tedious days. 

It only gets worse when the weather gets quite snowy. Whether it be at home or during the school day, the roads always get frightful posing an extreme threat to the already struggling MC driver. The parking lot turns into a slip-in-slide, with enough accidents to rename the “The Twelve Days of Christmas” into the “The Twelve Days of Fender-Benders.”

“I can't even believe they expect us to be here,” says senior Frank Burke. Burke, a prominent member of the MC wrestling, typically has good attendance. “The only reason I showed up today was to go to wrestling and once that's done, I'm out of here.” 

Burke mentioned that the plans for attendance are unknown once wrestling season ends but “honestly, the only Christmas miracle” was his car starting today and he is “satisfied with that.”

Burke is not the only one who admits to not doing much the past few weeks. Many students at MC are admitting to doing a whole lot of nothing just trying to make it through the day.

“Personally, I like doing nothing because even though I'm here, ordinarily I would be doing school stuff, ” says freshman Eddie Briscoe. A very diligent student and recent student of the month, Briscoe works very hard on his academics. “I look forward to finishing the year out strong, despite what my peers may think.”

Following the way students have acted this year, the administration plans on making changes for next year so students do not slack as much. Now that the break is here, students do not have to fear as much, only the Christmas homework they will not be doing.