A fter three hours of lying on the beach in Matagorda during spring break, the thought occurred to me that I could get used to this. Vacation, that is, not sunburn. Being the morose fellow that I am, I dismissed the thought, and resigned myself to the inevitable onslaught of classes and backed-up schoolwork that could no longer be postponed, throwing in a curse at the administration for not giving us a comparable “Fall Break.”
Then, like a ray of sunshine bursting through the clouds, my windshield and years of conditioning that told me more school is a bad idea, it hit me: year-round school. I know, I know, it sounds like a silly idea, but I’ve done my homework and it has its merits.
Currently, fall and spring semesters include about 14 weeks of class and one week of scattered holidays and other excuses to skip school. Multiplied by the eight semesters that it should take to complete a “four-year” degree, that means about 112 weeks of school, not counting the assorted days off.
Given that there are 52 weeks in a year, that works out to only two years and two months of actual school during the four years that we are “going to college.” What scientific reason is there for taking the extra 1 ? years from students’ lives? Nothing more than an archaic agricultural-based tradition and our own comfort with the system.
Semester-based school wastes students’ time, money and other resources, and I don’t think it is just my impatience talking. Every summer, millions of college students head home for three months, packing up their entire college world and either towing it back home or forking over big bucks to store it. When they get home to mooch off the family for the next 90 days, most of us look for a summer (i.e. temporary) job. Employers waste time and money training us and just as soon as we’ve learned the right way to do our job, it’s time to pack up and head back to college.
Once back, many of us sign a nine-month lease because who knows what we’ll be doing next summer, paying the price of uncertainty with a few extra $100 saved from our summer job.
So far, I’ve managed to avoid the summer school that many of us take advantage of, because I have a good-paying summer job, but every summer I spend a considerable amount of time waiting for August to roll around so I can get back on the long road to graduation.
This is how most of us spend four years of our life. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could speed things up, if we could spend less time and cash waiting around and get it all over with? I think so.
What I think we should consider is simple: year-round school, with spring break-like mental health weeks every other month. Imagine a year like this: two weeks off for Christmas and New Year, spring break in March, a week off in May, a week off around the Fourth of July, another week off in September and a full week off for Thanksgiving. One month later, it’s time for Christmas again. And, you get to graduate in 2 ? years.
With a system like this, it would take two years and 22 weeks to graduate with a bachelor’s degree. So, juniors like me, who started attending in August 2006, would have graduated by now. Sound like a plan? Of course, there are some kinks to iron out, like when to begin “semesters” (and what to call them, as that label would be inaccurate), how to include the holidays and reading days we now enjoy, when to schedule Ring Days and such. But, getting eight weeks off from school during an academic year beats the one week that we currently enjoy.