It’s winter time, and while the temperature outside is going down and finals are coming up, the atmosphere in school is tense, perfect time for spirit week. All over Tik Tok, you see other schools participate in spirit, but ours? Walking in the halls I see no spirit whatsoever, which stings my heart a bit and doesn’t meet my expectations for the fun week. It’s disappointing. In fact, spirit week should motivate students to attend school to watch their classmates participate in cool, fun activities.

Spirit week only occurs three times a year: Homecoming, Winter break, and Spring break, so why not try to make it fun? Especially now since the holidays are coming up when life is filled with joy and warmth. I enjoy the feeling of dressing up in the morning in something other than sweatpants and a hoodie. It makes me feel more awake during my classes.

Many students feel embarrassed or insecure to dress up, which is reasonable but come on, enjoy your youth while you can. When we leave school and graduate, wouldn’t it feel nice to know that you had fun and used your time to make some memories? Being too tight about people’s perception of you doesn’t bring you happiness, but in the long run will make you feel miserable.

There are schools that don’t even get the chance to have spirit week. We should appreciate that we get a week off from wearing boring school clothes and actually have a bit of fun. It is interesting how much dressing up can lighten a person’s mood. Other schools with uniforms, like private schools, pay a dollar to dress down one day every other month where they still have a strict policy of what to wear and not to wear. A single, desperate, dollar is spent just so they can have one free day, where we are fortunate to get a whole week of expressing our wild side.

At the end of the week, there’s a reward, the pep assembly. However, I think those who don’t dress up all week should not be able to attend the assembly. It’s supposed to be a prize, but most take advantage of the fact that they get to have all their periods shortened throughout the day.

In order to get more kids to dress up, I think teachers should give extra credit to kids who do dress up, just to give them a boost of motivation that could help them improve not only in class but in their school spirit as well. Maybe if we tried as a student body, we can all finally start enjoying school and having some spirit.