APs and random cold days are no more — summer is here! When the school year comes to a close on June 20, the next few months should be filled with respite and relaxation. Unfortunately, for many students at PHS, the opposite is true. Even though the school year has ended, their work is just beginning.

Many students choose to spend their summers taking PHS classes in order to get ahead of the rest of their grade level. By taking classes like Accelerated Chemistry or Accelerated Geometry over the summer, students hope to be able to take more rigorous and advanced courses during the actual school year. Even more alluring is the potential opportunity to take a class at Princeton University in junior or senior year, which is made available if students exhaust the courses at PHS. The opportunity cost of simply relaxing over summer break is often too much for students (and their parents). But choosing to take summer courses comes with a cost of its own: these courses are incredibly intense. They pack nine months’ worth of content into six weeks, and not only do the grades end up on the student’s final transcript, which means that they are just as stress-inducing as normal classes, but the classes are incredibly long. Participants endure six consecutive hours of sitting in a classroom from Monday through Thursday, all the way from June 27 to August 1. That’s two-thirds of the entire summer.

Then, after kids have spent weeks and weeks stressing over nine months worth of tests, and paid $1500 for the course in the first place, there’s one last test they must take, which is a final exam that has questions about everything that the summer class has covered. In the case of the summer math program, if a student’s grade in the course up to that point is less than 88 percent, they cannot take the test in the first place, and their summer has been effectively wasted. If they do qualify, the test can only be taken once, and the stakes are incredibly high — if a student scores lower than 90 percent, again, their entire summer has been completely wasted, as they are no longer eligible to advance past that class, and must retake it during the regular school year.

It’s not much of a secret that for the most part, students attend these rigorous summer programs — course advancement programs, debate camp, SAT prep camp — to better their academic track record more than to pursue a passion. Many high schoolers, often rising freshmen and sophomores, are dragged into these intense courses before they know whether or not they are passionate about the subject. If anything, the cut and dry nature of these somewhat surface-level summer courses may put students off. Summer is a time for high schoolers to dip their toes into a variety of fields, and to develop genuine interests through their own small projects. Yes, students should pursue their interests to the fullest, but first, they need to know what those interests are.

Moreover, PHS students should be using summer as a time to connect with friends and family. During the school year, high schoolers often get home from school or from practice and go straight to their room to finish their homework. Family time is rare, and summer should be used for some much needed catch up.

Laying in bed and reading for hours at a time, enjoying ice cream at Community Park Pool, buying popcorn at Communiversity — in elementary school, summer break was heaven. It was a time to take a deep breath, lay back, and enjoy the company of our friends and family to the fullest. In high school, as we’ve seen, it’s a different story. Summer is now just another opportunity to overtax ourselves with work to prove to colleges that we are better than everyone else.

Although PHS students should be spending their precious summers pursuing things that interest them, this should come in the form of a low-stress online course, or camps where, over the duration of just one or two weeks, they can meet new people without any of the academic stress that summer courses bring. Every school year at PHS is insanely stressful, and in order to actually do well in the classes students are interested in, they must use their summers effectively — by relaxing and getting away from the strenuous environment of high school. Worrying about grades and colleges all the time is exhausting; summer is a chance to take a step away from all of that worry.