LAST WEEK marked the end of our first official break of the school year. No classes were held Monday and Tuesday in order to grant University students some reading days. The purpose of these days was left up to the students; whether they wanted to catch up on old work or prepare for upcoming midterms was entirely their choice. The problem then results from the fact that many students have midterms both before and after the reading days and have to accomplish multiple tasks over the two days as well as the weeks preceding and following them. Professors should come to a consensus as to the purpose of reading days and schedule their midterms accordingly.
Reading days have been around for about 14 years. In an interview, Shirley Menaker, associate provost for academic support and classroom management, said, "They were originally instituted because there was at least one suicide and a recognition that students were under a lot of stress and in need of a break." She went on, "They were originally designed as a temporary idea about 14 years ago, and after two years, we evaluated it and people seemed to think it was doing the job it was meant to do."
What were reading days meant to do? According to Menaker, "We would like to do what we can to bolster the sense of relieving stress and helping students to catch up on work." In order to relieve stress, students should not have to worry about both catching up on work and upcoming midterms when they return to classes.
Having midterms before reading days would be the same as having exams any other time during the semester. Students could begin to prepare in advance and use their weekend time to study. Once the midterms have passed, students can refocus on daily class assignments. They could then use the reading days to recuperate and catch up on missed reading. This would lend to the idea that the reading days are more of a fall break, which many students already take them as.
If professors were to give midterms in the two weeks following reading days, and none before, the holiday would be used mostly toward studying. The week before would not leave students as exhausted and behind in classes, and the focus of the reading days could indeed be on studying for upcoming exams. This would give students more work time than they would find in a normal week in which they could buckle down and get a lot more meaningful studying done. The result would be a lot less cramming the night before in multiple subject areas.
Not everyone uses reading days for class preparation, and many students choose to use them as a true vacation from work. Often, these students will then return to their schoolwork on Tuesday night and still find themselves cramming for the upcoming exams. This is where a clear idea of the purpose of reading days and a concrete timetable for midterms would help.
If students decide to take the days as a true break and travel or relax the entire time, then getting behind in their class readings would be their own fault. A choice to relax instead of study would be made by students with the full awareness that midterm exams were coming up the following week, and their relative success on the exam would reflect that.
As it stands now, students have a stressful week before reading days, with a mixture of class and midterms. Then comes reading days where they must pick and choose between studying for the other midterms they have to take the next week, or catching up on work missed while studying for the exams they just took. This stress is unnecessary and could be solved simply by settling upon a week for midterms before or after reading days, but not some one week and some the next.
Reading days are not scheduled around midterms. According to Menaker, "We try and make the holiday one of two weeks right in the middle of the semester." The University Calendar Committee waits until January of the preceding year to determine when reading days will fall. They plan in conjunction with Family Weekend, convocation, film festivals, and other events, but not with midterms. "The administration is not going to comment on how the faculty runs their classes," Menaker said. "Not all faculty have midterms and they are all over the place as to what they utilize in order to determine final grades."
If one week was designated for midterms and another set aside to catch up on work, in either order, there would be significantly less unnecessary stress on students during a simple four-day weekend, especially as this holiday was originally instated with the purpose of relieving just such stress.
(Alex Roosenburg is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.)
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