A change long over due
Provost Jacquelyn Core is leading a movement to revise the academic calendar and provide students with a weeklong fall break as well as a weeklong Thanksgiving break in the fall semester.
We believe this change is long overdue, but includes some unfavorable tweaks that balance out the positives.
As students, we know how tasking it is to attend classes and study regularly, all while getting very little sleep, for 11 consecutive weeks without a day off between Labor Day and Thanksgiving break.
This semester, that issue was aggravated when Thanksgiving break fell before the final week of classes and finals week, thus creating a disturbance in the regular flow of classes and forcing the completion of some major projects in mid-November.
A weeklong fall break in October will certainly provide students with a much-needed (and well-deserved) breath during the fall semester that will help us handle stress and give us a more ideal opportunity to serve on mission trips.
However, the addition of this fall break to the calendar will undoubtedly have a few flaws, especially in its first year.
Don’t be surprised if school spirit is rather low when homecoming rolls around Oct. 11; when classes conclude the day before and break officially begins, a large portion of the student body is bound to flee campus for home. Students should consider spending that homecoming on campus to wind down, relax and focus on friends with no classes or deadlines to distract them.
In the spring semester, finals week will begin at the end of April, but this earlier exit is accompanied by the elimination of dead week.
Sticking with that theme of focusing on friends with no distractions, dead week is every senior’s last chance to spend a week with friends without worrying about assignments.
If dead week really is stripped from seniors under this revised calendar, Waynesburg graduates won’t have the same opportunity for one last hoorah like the generations before them.
While students are right to rejoice about an additional week off during the fall and an earlier finals week in the spring, the fact that a few traditions might be diminished is an unfortunate addition to these otherwise positive changes.