Seven days a week, students at Stanford University are working. We have classes Monday through Friday, with a three-day weekend only if you hit the schedule jackpot. We have primary-document course readers to skim, job hours to clock and meetings to get to at night. Unfinished work is never a distant thought, which means meals are cut short and phone calls home are brief. (The self-proclaimed procrastinators are often the modest but meanest homework machines.) This is Stanford culture—accomplishment via productivity—and that’s great, period.

Unfortunately (fortunately), we’re all limited by biological humanity, i.e. sleep, food, social quotas. Times when deadlines don’t press in allow for temporary cold-shoulder treatment of the to-do list. You follow a TV show, hit the gym, skip classes and get drunk for study breaks. Otherwise, there are diminishing marginal returns (I’m taking Econ 1A!).

But let’s break down that nomenclature. Study breaks are defined by what they are not: studying. They simply emphasize the slots of time that restrict them.

And now for a one-word vocabulary quiz: define “rest.”

Stop reading. Think.

Dear reader, I don’t know who you are, but we’re similar in a lot of ways, which is why I’m writing this column: my sources of joy are public domain. (But wow, I’m struggling to legitimately introduce this next one. Ok, I’m going for direct.)

I don’t work on Sundays.

Yes. I don’t work on Sundays. It’s the day I put on my shelves everything that attempts to pressure and push me around. At the most basic level, I don’t do homework. At the most abstract level, I do anything and everything that truly fulfills me. This means much of my adored alone time, reading, journaling and seeing the people I love for rendezvous dates and adventures. (I have a blog about cafés and restaurants, to give you a hint on what my exploration style is.) Every Sunday is different because no week is the same, but the timeless constant is that it’s cut from worldly chronology.

Perhaps you’re thinking I’m taking eight units, but this is my “hardest” quarter. Typical student small talk is usually a complaint congress, debating who is reaching insanity faster, so please see this as honest context: editing an academic journal, two (different) language partners three times a week, uncompleted major declaration and study-abroad application, a job on campus (I got the You’re Hired e-mail yesterday!), several weekly commitments to my faith’s fellowship (though I feel more need for these than duty), this Wednesday column (also not dread-inducing—yay!), five courses, the most homework I’ve had to date, and 20 units (again, but this time not buffered by an athletic class, which I thus had to pay for instead).

Honoring an entire day of rest was not and is not a Sunday-morning decision, and requires some wily scheduling strategies. Looking in from the outside, it appears unattainable and—what? Difficult? Wasteful? Unproductive? That’s what I first thought, before I opted in. Actually, though, when I acknowledged my refusal or inability to rest, I realized I was opting out. I was opting out of this entire framework where we pick our majors and courses and activities and then let the world pick how we operate them. We live and breathe an atmosphere that demands that we work, all the time, and the significance is lost in the agenda. But when I started resting (doesn’t it sound epic?), I re-established all of my weekday work as my privileged choice, and not my charge. I rest because I need to and I want to and it’s possible.

My Sunday of rest is counterculture. That means many challenging conflicts as I put myself at odds with most of my classmates and virtually disconnect. It’s my weekly gift of nothing related to the world’s stubbornly narrow idea of productivity. Consequently, the one question I get, even if well-intentioned, is a frown-tinged “So what do you do?” The easy, literal and beautiful answer is that I rest. I watch out for this girl named Nina who loves going out, running around, sitting outside on benches (watching people) and remembering her favorite things.

Every day is technically still my favorite. On this one day, though, the world and all of the petty things it asks of me gets a busy tone. There’s so much constant stress around, but I’ve never felt this much stability and peace in my life. I’m serious. And there’s so much more goodness in that than I ever could have imagined. Or tried to stick in between study sessions.

Nina still hasn’t received any e-mail responses from secret mysterious readers. Don’t be a stranger at [email protected].