Make Frees Less Productive

By LYNDSEY MUGFORD ‘19

My freshman year was filled with unsolicited advice. Brand new to Milton, I came off as pretty shy, very lost, and clearly in need of guidance. Luckily, everyone wanted to help. Faculty, friends, and family each gave their two cents on which clubs to attend, what music to say I liked, and how to best navigate my overall high school experience. However, amid all the noise, one message stuck out above the rest: If you want to succeed at Milton, you need to use your free periods to do homework.

At Milton, especially during freshman year, we preach this message until new students know it by heart. We assign freshmen mandatory study halls to build their habits from scratch, deliberately structuring study times into their days until productivity becomes muscle memory. The school teaches its students that this constant time management is the key to Milton success. After four years, though, I’ve got to admit it—I’m not convinced.

To be clear, I’m not arguing that time management is not an important skill. It is. Students will need to work effectively and efficiently against deadlines for the rest of their lives, and encouraging them to develop these skills early on cements these positive habits and allows them to manage the heavy Milton workload. However, the lesson that all free periods, and, by extension, the majority of unstructured time, should be devoted to diligent study is damaging.

As a day student who rode the 6 o’clock bus home every evening, I often found my free periods to be the sole source of unstructured time on campus. My main opportunities to engage with the community, build relationships, and invest in social spaces fell between my classes, and as I attempted to settle into my new environment these moments were key for defining my social experience. However, rather than seize the opportunity, I followed the advice I’d heard; during frees, I’d grab my backpack and head to the library to work. Certainly, these library frees were productive, but they came at the expense of hanging out with friends and forming valuable connections. Even now, I often hear people say that they can’t stay in the Stu, or can’t tag along to lunch, because they have to do homework—I find myself saying these things all the time. Taken alone, these decisions seem insignificant and even smart, but when repeated they can create a significant social disconnect. All that time hiding in the library adds up. This constant, solitary pursuit of academic success, while helpful on paper, ultimately isolates students.

This standard of “constantly working” also fosters guilt when students do decide to take time for themselves. Recently, in my English class, several students commented that they found it difficult to relax, because they always felt like they should be working instead. By setting the standard that free time should be used to optimize academic output, Milton has created an environment that equates leisure with laziness. When I spend my free period hanging out with friends, I’m “missing an opportunity” or making an unwise decision. This guilt makes the already demanding workload omnipresent; it hangs over my head whether I’m working or not.

This combination of social isolation and guilt damages more than just individual students: it threatens our overall community. We are, first and foremost, an academic institution. However, this pervasive “all work no play” attitude erodes the characteristics that make Milton more than just a collection of Harkness tables and textbooks; it threatens social structures and, frankly, joy and fun on campus. It’s easy to say that working during every free period is the key to Milton success if you define that success in purely academic terms. But if you expand it to include relationship richness and sense of community fulfillment? Not so much.

As I approach the end of my Milton experience, some of my biggest regrets are those times I pulled back instead of leaning in to those around me. Similarly, my most valuable memories have been the unplanned, seemingly insignificant moments with my friends and family, often during the times I should have been working. Whether it’s listening to music in the Paper office way too late on a weeknight, wasting a double free sitting on the quad, or just doing absolutely nothing for an hour, those are the moments that I think of as my Milton experience. At the end of the day, those memories are what really matter.

So, I think we should stop telling freshman to use every free period for homework. Instead, we should encourage them to be deliberate with their time allocations and balance work with leisure. By providing more well-rounded guidance, we can prepare students for life beyond daily assignments and help them craft a healthy, sustainable, and fulfilling work / life balance. After all, high school is short. While you still can, use your frees to hang out with and invest in friends, guilt-free. I, at least, found that my history reading could usually wait.