Imagine yourself running through the gamut of late-night study sessions, practice exams, study guides and a student loan’s worth of coffee to finish the last leg of this painful journey with enough midterms to make you feel like you relate to a Journey song if you were in a relationship and had proper sleeping habits.

After all that, you are free … for at least a week.

Every year, students are faced with the issue of either having exams before or after Spring Break — sometimes both.

You should consider yourself better off if out of the three possible outcomes, you are given all your midterms before Spring Break.

Let’s be honest, after about eight weeks, everybody is ready for some time off to decompress and relax. Finishing the grueling first half of the semester might not make exams before break sound appealing, but the end result is glorious.

By finishing everything you need to do before that blessed week of reprieve, you earn more time for doing all of the things you wanted to do with a week to yourself. You could go see family. You could work out all week. Or you could sit back and literally do nothing.

Here’s the problem with having exams after Spring Break: you might still become tempted to do nothing school-related regardless of the looming doom awaiting your return.

Having to worry about tests during a period of time that deserves rest and studying may also add to your stress instead of give you peace of mind. Nobody wants to feel stressed during Spring Break. Where is the logic in having to take tests right after coming back to school?

It could be argued that finishing the first half of spring semester with exams is a way to burn someone out past the point of repair.

The problem with exams after Spring Break is that it arguably does not give students the proper amount of time to rest without anything school related in their minds. It’s a miserable concept to not even be able to spend at least a few days without books on your mind.

Stress is like a tea kettle. Take two kettles, pour water in and turn on the stove. When they start steaming, imagine one of those kettles gets five minutes to cool off while the other one just has its temperature lowered for five minutes.

You probably shouldn’t touch a steaming tea kettle after five minutes but if you had to choose, undoubtedly the one that took a small break from steaming would be the preferred tea kettle.

There are benefits to having a week to study for exams after Spring Break. It’s an entire week where you could do uninterrupted studies without worrying about having to go to class.

But is it worth adding that strain on your health? The short answer is no.

Exams before Spring Break are something to be appreciated because students get the chance to catch up on something that is easily forgotten: self-care. All the studying in the world is for naught if you forget to take care of yourself.

Enjoy your Spring Break if you’re ever given the chance to knock out all your midterms beforehand. Students should not feel guilty for relaxing.