Winter break. Spring break. Summer vacation.

These three events are what many students would say they most look forward to throughout their year.

But why?

As the school year goes on, students check the days off of their calendars like robots. All they long for is a break, and the time spent at school is often overlooked by so many students.

All too often, students wish they withheld the ability to speed up time. In the dead of winter, students are longing for that one-week vacation and the capability to travel somewhere warm to escape their boring, dull world at home.

As soon as students return from their rejuvenating, restoring vacations, the immediate countdown to summer begins. Students long for the days where they don’t have to carry their bodies throughout the halls of the school building, but that is not the experience that students should be having as some of the best days of their lives pass by right before their eyes.

High school is an exciting experience that should not be lived simply wishing for the days where you don’t get to see the faces of your friends and peers in the hallways every day. High school is about the people you meet, the lessons you learn, and the memories you build within the building so many students wish to get away from.

As students look forward to the days they have away from school, they begin to miss out on what is happening directly before them. Each day, a new lesson can be learned, or a new friendship can be made. The only faces you have seen since the age of six are walking beside you for the last time, so why would you try to escape?

As the friendly faces you pass walking through the hallways slowly begin to fade away one by one, don’t take the time you spend with them for granted. As you distance yourself from the mentors and teachers who have made you the person you are today, spend the rest of the time you have with them cherishing every moment.

Instead of living for the days in the future, stop the clock and live in the present. As the time you spend in the building where you have lived the past four years slowly passes by, live each day as if it were your last. Hold on the minutes you get to spend with the friends you have known ever since you were just a young child.

Stop living for the future. Live in the present.

Stop the clock.