At JMU, students are considered lucky to have such long breaks. We got 5 days off for fall break back in October, we get a week for Thanksgiving break, and roughly a month for Winter break between the Fall and Spring semester. The key word there is “considered.” Are these breaks really a break? This is a question I have asked myself multiple times in the past week. With Thanksgiving break starting today, I am excited to go back home to my family and celebrate the holiday. I have the privilege to be able to make it home and stay for a week and come back on time. The people I feel for are those who live on campus or those who have no car to drive home and cannot have anyone come get them.
The issue lies in the timing of our Thanksgiving break. We go on break for a week, but we must return for a full week of class then we start finals the following week. While it is nice to have a break before finals, it is far from a break. With the stress of finals looming over the heads of students and professors assigning papers and finals projects, they use the fact that they are not due until after break ends to soften the blow. Many teachers have sent messages to students in my classes along the lines of: Although your final assignment is due after Thanksgiving break, if you wait to start it until break ends, you will not be able to do the assignment to your best ability. They commonly follow that by saying something such as: enjoy your break!
If the irony is not clear, I will explain it to you. They want us to do the work that they have assigned but also want us to enjoy our break. How am I meant to enjoy my break when I must write a 10-page paper or prepare a final presentation. To make it better, this is on top of the things I must do over “break” such as: travelling, helping set up for the holiday or working to make money to support myself (that is, if the job will take me back for the three free days I can work). The worries of the holiday season are enough to worry about when home for most so adding the stress of finals just makes it worse. People wonder why so many people have mental health issues around these times but never care to find a solution.
“What do you want me to do? There is nothing I can do to fix the timing.” This is what I was told when I asked a professor why we had to do work over our so-called “break.” It is funny they said this because I thought of a very simple solution. I cannot take the credit for the idea because during Covid lockdown, when I was a freshman at a different university, they used this scheduling method. Instead of starting the semester in late August, we basically push the entire calendar back two weeks. We start the Fall semester in early to mid-August, which allows us to then push finals up two weeks. If this was the case, we would already have had our finals and we would be entering our Winter break which would go from Thanksgiving to about the end of the first week in January. We would be home for all of the holidays that are under the holiday season umbrella and not have to worry about travelling back and forth constantly to home. It would also allow for a more enjoyable holiday season for those that celebrate instead of having to worry about assignments that are given during these breaks.
I hope the school can implement some policies, like this one, to look after their students in the near future.
ShoutOut! James Madison University 