December is a time for students to look forward to winter break, when they can catch up on rest and enjoy the activities that make winter special, like ice skating, sledding, caroling, and building snowmen. The time of year when the superintendent’s cat tweets out, teasing possible snow days, draws near. The nice list for this part of the school year is about looking forward to what comes next, whether that be winter break, second semester, or the hopefully many snow days that await us. 

Featured on the naughty list for Papio South students in December are late nights spent studying for finals, icy roads posing danger to new drivers, the stress of holiday shopping, and the cold confining all but the most bundled-up to the indoors. For many students, finals themselves are written on the naughty list, in all caps and underlined at least three times. What separates the naughty list from the nice list is that the naughty list is about the present and the nice list is about the future.

While no student lives the exact same life as another, the naughty and nice lists are the same in that we will go through them together. So while we are pushing through finals, cold weather, and all the challenges that come with those things, we are doing it together so that we can enjoy all of the positive things that are coming together. 

Even so, every student will face things on their personal lists that aren’t shared by others during this time of year, but if we can learn to get through shared hardship we can learn to help each other with our own solo hardship. Even though there is a shared list that is no doubt important, the unique aspects of each list that influence each person’s life cannot be ignored. Perhaps that’s what the holiday season is about: enduring shared challenges, celebrating our victories together while trying to help our peers through their individual struggles.