In this feature, student reporter Moriyah Marshall talks with classmates about the push and pull of the spring semester, from AP exam stress and packed schedules to birthday parties, personal milestones, and the case for slowing down before summer takes over.

It’s hard to ignore that every day that passes brings you closer to the freedom and fun that summer promises. In fact, at this awkward time of year between spring and summer break, you might struggle to remember “that time is something to be thankful for,” as junior Caeden Hunt says.

The end of spring semester comes with its usual crammed schedule: the dread of upcoming cumulative AP exams, the unnecessitating studying, the peak of many spring sports’ seasons, and the flurry of birthday parties because apparently everybody is born in April—not to detract from junior Ella Crabtree’s outlook on the season: “My birthday is in April, so that’s why I love spring, personally.”

Still, these stressors cause most students, like Ella, to struggle to balance “[their] academic life with [their] social life,” because this time of year is when “everything near the end of the school year happens all at once and suddenly feels real.”

Amongst all this chaos, attempting to plow through the mountain that is spring semester while, as Ella puts it, “tying up loose ends with your academics,” you can undervalue the opportunities and changes the season encompasses.

Indeed, in our rush to just make it to summer or, for some of our seniors, to “get the heck out of high school”, we’re blinded from the beauty and growth surrounding us.

Caeden reflected on his own highlights of the academic semester.

“This semester, I challenged myself," he said. "I have always been apprehensive when deciding to take hard classes and join clubs, yet this year I went outside my comfort zone.”

As we continue to develop as people during the last days of the school year, when time paradoxically flies by while still crawling ever so slowly, we have to actively pursue making memories that will outshine the academic and athletic stresses.

For Caeden, what will be most memorable is that he was able to achieve all A’s and become president of the orchestra program.

"I applied myself, even if things didn’t go exactly as planned,” he said.

For Ella, it was her 17th Birthday party, which consisted of her and her friends "taking a million cute pictures, eating pizza and cupcakes, and bedazzling [their] favorite items,” which she described as “a shining memory, for sure.”

After all, most adults remember the connections they made and the milestones they reached as the highlights of their high school eras. So even though May is widely recognized as a tough and stressful month, remember, like Ella, to “have times where [you] focus on schoolwork and studying while also having designated times where [you] de-stress with friends too.”

Like Caeden profoundly reasoned, “We spend our whole lives fighting for time, yet we tend to overlook how we spend it in every moment, so apply yourself continuously because every day is a new opportunity.”

Dancing at the tips of our fingers is summer, the season synonymous with “AP exams [being] over,” as Caeden puts it, and according to Ella, “time off basking in the sunlight, getting tan, swimming, and eating fruit by the pool.”

Yes, many of us have alluring summer plans, like Caeden, who’s “swimming with [his] team this summer,” or we at least have a bucket list, like Ella, that in theory will help us to “truly [enjoy] every day of summer.”

However, spring should hold at least half a month more of your attention, whether or not you follow the astronomical summer solstice on June 21st, meteorological June 1st, or scholastic calendars May 20th at noon.

Spring only occurs once a year, and after leaving high school, more than 20% of the average person’s expected spring seasons will be bygone, so don’t be the person to let the season breeze by. Ignore, to the best of your extent, the “pollen in the air” and try, like Ella, to remember why it is that you “love spring, personally.”