Photo courtesy of Flickr
It is almost Thanksgiving Break and the excitement around campus is palpable. While I cannot wait to have the full week off from class, almost all of my friends are at college until Tuesday — a similar predicament to the one I faced during Fall Break. At times like these, I find myself wishing Hamilton’s break schedule was different. Having long, sparse breaks definitely has its benefits, but I think that a better solution would be to have shorter breaks with random days off.
First, instead of Fall Break, I would much rather have sporadic days off from class at a few points during the first semester. One major point in favor of this idea is that Fall Break is less of a “break” and more of a long weekend. While it is nice to have Thursday and Friday off, it is also hard to do anything substantial with that time. Taking those two days and using them individually to create two long weekends would likely pace the semester much better than the current schedule does.
Another point against having a Fall Break is that for those who cannot go home during this short break, it is a really hard time to be on campus. The only dining option open is Commons and it is only open during select hours. Additionally, there can be a sense of loneliness or isolation when friends depart for the break and there is little to do if you are on campus. To this point, Wade Steely ’20 says, “I wanted to stay on campus for Fall Break, but decided not to because the College makes it too hard to be on campus.”
Wade’s comment alludes to a bigger point; students that have the ability to either go home or to visit friends at other colleges can enjoy a fun and unique weekend. For students that cannot travel home or visit friends, there is not a good alternative.
Rather than getting rid of the days off that Fall Break affords, we should redistribute those days to make the longer stretches of the semester more manageable. The same goes for Thanksgiving Break; instead of starting it when classes end on Friday, we could post-pone the break until the Tuesday of the next week, thus giving us four newly available days to use.
I believe that these four individual days off would be much better for the student body. I suggest that the most balanced way to spread out these days would be to have them be: one Monday, one Tuesday, one Thursday, and one Friday without class during the first semester. This would allow for two three-day weekends. These three-day weekends would not only allow for students to enjoy a fun couple of days, but also would create something for students to look forward to, as opposed to the existing practice of grinding for weeks on end in pursuit of the perpetually distant Thanksgiving and Winter breaks. The Tuesday and Thursday off from class could also make for exciting, new events on-campus that could usher in new traditions unique to the Hill. Of course, this assumes that campus would still function normally with regular dining hall hours and dorm access.
These days off from class would also act as mental health days. By definition, a mental health day is, “a day that an employee takes off from work in order to relieve stress or renew vitality.” In this case, the students would be the “employees,” and “work” would be the normal class schedule. The addition of such days would help all students with stress, improve productivity, and provide students an opportunity to catch up on much needed sleep. A
Huffington Post
article investigating the bene fits of mental health days found that workers experienced uniformly positive effects from these days.
Mental health is, rightly, a major focus on campus right now. I think that now is the perfect time to start a dialogue about changing the academic schedule to accommodate the realities of student life. In workplaces around the country, the issue of a work-life balance is debated and acted upon, but the same conversation about school work and life is not as prevalent on college campuses.
A recent study highlighted several key connections between stress from work and mental health. The World Health Organization found that one in four Americans state that “work is a cause of anxiety” and a 80 percent of respondents said that they are not happy with their current work-life balance. The same study found that these struggles negatively affect productivity. It is not hard to see how these results could manifest themselves in similar ways on campus.
On our campus, being alone on campus during a short break, like Fall Break, can also contribute to aforementioned feelings of loneliness and isolation that also correlate to mental health issues. For a student struggling with mental health, the worst thing to do would be to have four or five days on campus without any friends there, whereas a collection of three-day weekends would likely relieve the stress of classes while also allowing for fun experiences with friends.
Beyond first semester, we should consider changing the schedule in the spring as well. Keith Ruggles ’20 says, “I really like the idea of having sporadic days off. I also think that would be particularly helpful during the spring semester. We have the two-week break, but besides that, it feels like we’re in class everyday.” With eight straight weeks of classes between the end of Winter Break and the beginning of Spring Break, it is easy to see why Ruggles holds this perspective. During these stretches of full academic weeks, days can blend together and lose some of the meaning they would hold if students were afforded a break every now and then to relax and reflect. I suspect we would also be able to foster a greater sense of community from these days as well.
This is not the first time changing the Spring academic calendar has been discussed. Sophomore Class President Cesar Guerrero Domenech ’20 brought up this issue during the Student Assembly meeting on October 2nd. He said, “In the spring semester it is very cold and dreary. We have eight weeks of work before Spring Break. Is there any bene t to having long weekends especially in times of academic stress? I don’t know if it helps, but I would say that I think it would have helped me last semester to have something to look forward to.”
In response, President Wippman said, “One idea that we have talked about is that at some schools, the President can unilaterally take a day off a semester. We haven’t really discussed this too far but we can look into it. We are looking at different ways we can destress the semester. Maybe more credit-no-credit options or including a J or May term.”
Wippman’s words indicate that he is aware of the stresses our schedule puts on students. My hope would be that the administration sees the bene fits not just of having a single extra day off, but also of reassessing the way we schedule breaks in order to make the school year more manageable. As we continue to address mental health on campus and seek ways to improve student life, our academic calendar should be one of the first places we look to for improvement.
