By Murphy Obershaw, A&E Editor
There is no spring break this year.
Since there is a pandemic, the school can’t risk people getting exposed to the virus and then bringing it back and causing an outbreak on campus. I would like to not have to shut down school again because online school is terrible, not seeing people is lonely, and I already bought a graduation dress to wear at an in-person ceremony.
While I understand that this was a very hard decision for the administration to make and while I agree that taking a week off from school could only lead to disaster, I think we need to take a moment to realize how terrible this is going to be.
Everyone likes having spring break because it is a break from school. But while it may be a break from going to school, it is not necessarily a break from all the responsibilities of school.
I do take some time off during spring break because school is rough and we all need some time to not think about it for the sake of our mental health. But I really only take the weekends off during spring break. The actual Monday through Friday that we have off from school I spend doing homework. I do my homework at a more relaxed pace than when I am in school, but I’m still doing homework.
Sometimes it’s catch-up work since the more into the semester you get, the busier it is going to be. Other times it is the homework you really don’t have any other time to do. It’s a struggle doing research papers or reading several books for a class/classes along with everything else students do in a day, so spring break is the perfect opportunity to do those bigger assignments.
And every once in a while, a professor says, “This looks like a lot, but we aren’t meeting for a while and you have plenty of time over spring break to do this.”
Without spring break, this leaves the one day we have off for Easter break as the day to accomplish all the homework that people used to do in a week. Not to mention the fact that this is a Catholic school and Thursday through Sunday of Holy Week, or the week leading up to Easter, are days where we should be focused on more spiritual things instead of homework.
Having no spring break is just going to be terrible, so please, professors, be kind to your students. You are already going to have to deal with our burnout from going so long without a break and the increased neuroticism that comes as a result of that while still having to teach in a pandemic world and trying to fight off your own burnout.
Please don’t assign your students any homework over Easter break at all. We really just need some time to not think about school and/or do bigger assignments.
During the last two weeks of in-person classes last semester, I kept telling myself to really take time to appreciate being here just in case anything happened and we wouldn’t be able to return for spring semester, and I still couldn’t enjoy being here.
Please help me not hate my last semester of college.
PHOTO: Courtesy Photo, University Advancement
