School isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon. But instead of 26 miles, it’s 16 weeks of classes, tests and papers.

At some point, though, you get to a point where you’re not sure you can keep going. Runners call it “hitting the wall.” In a marathon, it’s when the runner’s body runs low on short-term energy reserves. At that point, fatigue sets in and every move requires incredible effort.

We’re about there. You probably are too.

Most students work their tails off, and not just in the classroom. Many have to put in 10 or 20 hours per week at work in order to finance their education. And then there are hours of extracurriculars, important to help us develop professional and leadership skills, but also to help us find employment in a tough job market.

It’s exhausting.

But whether you know it or not, today is a very special day. There’s just one week left until Thanksgiving break — one month left until finals.

Hallelujah, right?

Like many of you, probably, we on the editorial board can’t keep ourselves from fantasizing about it.

Finally, some time to catch up on sleep, chill out with a beer and stuff our faces with home-cooked meals, instead of the fast food and vending machine fare we’re used to.

At last, we can go back home to our old stomping grounds to shoot the breeze with old friends [Although our high school BFFs were more important to us when we were freshmen. I mean, some of them have husbands or wives and full-time jobs by now].

And on the most basic level, break is a chance to get away from the close quarters of campus life, away from that coughing, sneezing and possibly H1N1-infected individual in the back corner of our 8 a.m. class.

So we’ll run back home, disinfect and boost our immune systems by spending a little more quality time asleep. Those little airborne immune-boosting packets just aren’t cutting it.

In just one week, we get a taste of all of the above. Then, in one month, we get Christmas — the whole enchilada.

It’s so close we can almost taste it.

But until the clock hits 5 p.m. next Friday, we all — the editorial board included — need to kick ourselves into high gear.

Three weeks left in the semester, plus finals week, doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is. Surely, almost every class has a test and a homework assignment or two left, which means there are still ample opportunities to bump grades up before the year’s end. And with the job market as dismal as it is, you may need top-notch marks to score the job you want.

So even if you’ve hit the wall, like we have, keep on truckin’. Put images of turkey, sleep and free time out in front of you, like a carrot on a stick, and run like hell toward the finish line.