The middle of the semester is a stressful time for students and faculty alike. To tackle this stress, in recent years, the university has added a two-day window of no classes they deem a “Fall Break,” a period they created “to allow for a mental recharge,” as stated on the university website. However, for many students, this little break seems to do more harm than good.
Though the university created this time as a way for students to relax and destress, the timing of it is rather unhelpful. The break takes place over only two days, a Thursday and Friday in early to mid-October. However, most students already have classes off on Fridays, so it is only one more day off added to people’s schedules, turning the usual three-day weekend into a four-day. In addition, most students return from said break only to be thrown right into midterm exams. This means the time students are meant to be relaxing, they are spending it studying and stressing out instead. When speaking with several different students from various majors and colleges, all of them agreed, saying something along the lines of, “I didn’t do any relaxing over Fall Break”.
The effects of Fall Break do not just end with midterms, however. Because the academic calendar requires a certain amount of credit hours for each class, the time given off during Fall Break must be made up. This time is then added on to the end of the semester, just before finals week. In previous years, students finished with finals around the second week of December. Now with the addition of Fall Break, on top of the days leading up to Thanksgiving, students are just starting finals at the same time they would have previously been finishing them.
All this begs the question: is Fall Break something the university should continue or would it benefit the students most to return to the former schedule with no break until Thanksgiving? Would it not make more sense to have a longer Winter Break, especially since some students take classes during that time? Are there no better ways the university could help students with their academic and mental load than merely a day off filled with anxiety over upcoming exams?
