The Art of Complaining

After reflecting on issues that irk me or strike me the wrong way, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to complain about the spring semester. This is largely due to my experience throughout the entire year. As a student who is trying to balance both learning and living through a pandemic, I found myself incredibly burnt out due to a lack of Spring break. I understood the need to limit the spread of COVID-19, however, This decision was at the expense of the students who had no time to recharge. I think the decision to only give us three days off in the middle of the week, was kind of useless. This is largely due to the fact that students are not able to completely relax when they know they have a lot of work to do throughout the week.

Personally, every week that we had a day off, I was studying due to the fact that I had a Friday test in CHEM 232 (Orgo 1). Two out of the three days I also had a Wednesday exam on the days off for MCB 250 (Genetics). Knowing this, I was not able to fully enjoy those days due to the fact that I locked myself into study rooms. Now, some may argue that I decided not to take these days off myself because the school had marked them as non instructional and asked instructors not to give homework. To that I would argue that, just saying don’t give homework is bull. Having a Spring Break is entirely different than just one day of “rest”. When students know they have exams the week they supposedly get a “break”, naturally students will study, unlike having an entire week where professors do not assign anything until you come back from your break after actually relaxing.

With the added stress of pandemic learning that includes: sketchy wifi, technological divides, zoom issues, and a lack of connectivity or communication between instructors and students, students should not be held to the same standard a “normal” semester may have of them. This time is a scary one where many students are going through so many uncertainties that are because of the pandemic. The no Spring Break just adds onto this stress by causing an increase in burnout and a lack of enthusiasm for learning.

Now that I have taken all of my finals and am trying to catch up on all the work for this class, I can finally say my brain can actually handle doing more work because I am no longer trying to squeeze in studying with the free time that I get. In a normal semester, I find that I am able to squeeze in some writing for my classes, so that by finals week I am not worrying about studying and writing final papers. The flexibility of this class is something that I have valued deeply due to the fact that this semester calls for more effort than I have ever put in for anything in my academic career. I am looking forward to being done and being able to relax on May 14th because I am self imposing a deadline for this class (tonight lol).

A Spring Break would have been very helpful to recharge and renew during these times, or just not having exams that week would also have been nice. It's alright though, the school gave me sand on the quad for their last day off… yayyy, how nice!