It is to known to most people that vacations are one of the many ways they can relieve stress, heighten their well-being, and energize themselves before they go back to work or school. Most schools split their two major vacations into two: one in the summer and one in the winter. These periods of long holidays allows students to get the rest they need to completely ready themselves for the upcoming school semester. Workers on the other hand, have the ability to decide when and how they want to spend their paid leave days. They could choose to spend all of their days in one vacation, or they might choose to divide it so that they have an extended weekend for a certain amount of weeks. While some might say that longer vacations enables them to have the leisure of going to distanced travels, many studies support how shorter vacations can bring more benefits than extended ones.

A study conducted by Jessica de Bloom, published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, showed that longer vacations do not have more benefits than shorter ones. In fact, de Bloom concluded that vacations provide a greater benefit--improves a one’s emotional state--when a person looks back at the memories of his/her vacation compared to when he/she experiences it. Keeping that in mind, it would be more beneficial to create more memories in short trips rather than only having a single memory of a long term trip. In addition, shorter vacations allows people to take less time to adjust back to their everyday life. People who come back from long vacations usually take more time to catch up with the pages of unopened emails and return from their “vacation mode”.

Shorter vacations lack the luxurious amount of time that longer vacations do. Granted, longer vacations have the leisure of being able to plan far-distance vacation trips however, these trips are likely to cause more stress than just relaxing at home during a four-day weekend. If the time period of a vacation is too long, it is imminent that a person might develop the feeling of being used to the diversion, and may go back to work feeling dreadful instead of feeling refreshed and recharged.

<Juwon Chun Granada Hills Charter High 11th Grade>