The holiday season is approaching, and at the surface level, you’d think it’s all about boxes, big or small, wrapped in decorative paper after being shipped overnight by Amazon.
Already, even before Halloween candy has entered the shelves, the signs of December appear. Stores already bring out Christmas lights, decorations, and creepy Santas, and talks about winter break already commence. We scramble like squirrels stockpiling acorns before winter, searching for the “right” thing to prove we love someone. Yet for students, the real gift of the season is not a new iPhone or a piece of jewelry; it’s the rare present of a lack of productivity and structured time. While sounding counterintuitive, a student being unproductive after months of classes, practices, meetings, and assignments, there is something almost rebellious about spending an afternoon in bed or seeing your friends without your history essay right in front of you.
At Andover, schedules rarely leave room to breathe. Between classes that stretch our minds, practices that test our bodies, and club meetings that spill late into the evening, every hour feels spoken for. Even weekends blur into an extension of the week, filled with homework, rehearsals, and competitions. In a place where productivity is the default language, rest often feels like a betrayal of the Andover work ethic. That’s why unstructured time, the kind that does not request a transcript for the next four years, nor an essay due yesterday, matters profoundly here. They are not wasted space but essential pauses, stitching us back together after weeks of rigor. At Andover, rest isn’t indulgence; it’s survival, and perhaps the most restorative tradition of the season.
After freshman fall, I experienced my first “break” after my first experience of the rigor of Andover. After approximately 11 weeks of “grinding it out,” I was presented with seemingly all the time in the world to do what I wanted. The leisure felt eerie, and honestly, it felt wrong. As students, we fulfill many obligations, such as classes, sports, clubs, and homework, which at times genuinely feel more demanding than solving a 6-level chemistry question. Even during breaks, we never truly seem to run out of things to do, whether it’s internships, practices, or extra classes; we would do anything to avoid accusations of wasting time. However, what if this “laziness” was not wasting time at all: unstructured hours are when the best conversations unfold, when a late-night talk drifts past 2 am without a clock looming over you, or when a spontaneous trip for hot cocoa instead of the sprints from Falls to Borden. These moments will never appear on our resumes; however, they linger far longer than grades or extracurricular activities. Idle times are when boredom sparks creativity and when rest stitches us back together, allowing us to return to the ring for another 11 weeks. While Andover culture often treats repose, especially for students, as indolence and requires us to optimize every minute of our lives, holidays break that pattern, even if only temporarily. Perhaps the season feels restorative because it takes off our calendars, stripping away the relentless demand to be useful.
The state of doing nothing, a mindset called niksen, while seemingly just a fancy cover-up for laziness and even a lack of intelligence, serves us more in the long run than constant action. A working paper by INSEAD explains that “… doing nothing is a great way to induce states of mind that nurture our imagination … Seemingly inactive states of mind can be an incubation period for future bursts of creativity.” For Andover students, who are asked daily to produce original ideas in classrooms, projects, and performances, this connection between rest and imagination is not abstract; it’s survival. The very downtime we’re taught to feel guilty about can actually be the wellspring for the insights, essays, and innovations our community values most. Rather than slacking off, rest becomes a tool that allows us to return to our demanding routines with sharper thinking and renewed perspective. We can never step back and reap the benefits of rest when we are in a constant state of drudgery, thinking that our work would be degraded if we took breaks. When I write my commentary articles, I usually get the idea from the night prior, once I’ve had enough time to separate from my work and lie down. Downtime fosters creativity, reflection, and authentic connection; without these things unlocked by niksen, we are machines. Doing nothing has significant psychological and physical value for us, allowing us to produce our best work, even during moments of inactivity. It’s not just rest, it’s a catalyst for inspiration, a fuel for our creative fires.
Still, taking this pause is not at all easy, especially for students who have been conditioned to equate every free minute with a lost opportunity. We scroll through college admissions pages, intimidated by the seemingly endless amount of achievement in each portfolio we come by, and assume more is always better. In this mindset, rest becomes a liability, as it hinders growth rather than being a necessary form of it. Yet, the reality is that what often separates thriving students from those who are burnt out is not the number of activities they juggle, but their willingness to pause and reflect. By rejecting the constant pressure to “optimize,” we learn that value is not always measured in output. Sometimes, the blank space in our schedules carries more weight than the crowded hours ever could. Of course, this doesn’t mean dropping every responsibility; instead, it means learning to prioritize which commitments truly matter and which ones can be put on hold. At Andover, that might look like choosing one afternoon to say no to another club meeting to protect an evening of rest. There may be no perfect alternative to the endless balancing act, but even small acts of reclaiming time remind us that rest has a place alongside achievement.
The holiday season is a time that permits us to embrace this blank space without guilt. It reminds us that time, not things, is the most restorative gift we can receive. When students allow themselves to rest, wander, and even be bored, they return with more energy, sharper focus, and a more profound sense of connection. In a culture that demands endless productivity, choosing to do nothing may be the most radical and necessary act of all. This December, the real present is not found in a box under the tree, but the permission to open those boxes altogether.
