Is the Second Quarter the Busiest Time of the Year?

With shorter days and more darkness, the second quarter is definitely the busiest time of year. With the semester coming to an end, a sense of urgency creeps into the minds of many students at Bellevue high.

Many students also celebrate major holidays during this time, such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. Therefore, there is a heightened number of students who travel and miss school days.

“One year, I was gone for a couple of days before Thanksgiving break and had to make it all up at once when I came back,” sophomore Sreeansh Kokkonda said.

Making up school days can be especially difficult because a student has to catch up on a lot of work every day that they miss, along with their daily work. For teachers, this increases their workload as they must accommodate students who are out of town.

Considering that it is also the end of a semester, some students will also be making up work from other assignments and exams that they have missed throughout the first quarter.

With the weather becoming progressively colder, many students also get a variety of sicknesses during this time.

“I usually get sick around the time of winter quarter due to seasonal changes in weather as well as a sickness that usually goes around during this time,” sophomore Benjamin Kim said.

This is another reason why students would have to make up for missing work and struggle to keep up with their assignments. Furthermore, when one student gets sick then it quickly spreads around the school as students are in contact with many other students each day.

“Due to days being shorter, I often get tired faster and require a lot more sleep which means that I can only be productive for so many hours in a day,” junior Conrad Krol said.

With gloomier weather and an earlier sunset, the second quarter can feel so busy because our bodies also struggle to function well, feeling more tired due to these changes.

Overall, the second quarter can feel like an elongated period of time in which the semester is coming to an end and so many things are happening at once. Even if this is true, winter break remains a time for Bellevue high students to connect and relax.