Lamenting a break that

passed too quickly

TODAY IS THE first day of the spring semester. Ostensibly, the break between the fall and spring semesters is designed to provide some sort of respite from the stress of papers and tests and week upon week of the same tired lecture the professor has been giving since the second day of class.

“But guess what — school starts in like a week and a half and it feels as though we just got out.” This is a message that a friend of mine, Jenny, sent to me, as the careful reader might surmise, approximately one and one-halves weeks ago.

I agree with her, though, for several reasons.

Jenny is directly referring to a situation with a class we shared together last semester. To fully appreciate our situation, it is important that the reader recall the date “Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007.”

I admit that it might not be as immediately familiar as, say, December 26th (Boxing Day) or June 23rd (Hug-a-Cop Day), I imagine that the date might sound some bells with at least a few students who attended school last semester.

January 2nd, as perhaps a few of you may have guessed, was the last day professors had to turn in grades from the fall semester. Jenny and I and a number of other students across the campus did not get their final grades in even that late.

Jenny and I, for instance, did not get our final grades in until January 5th, around 3 p.m.

This poses a problem for students who, like me, check their grades compulsively after finals until all have been submitted — people for whom the date January 2nd means at least as much as March 4th (Inauguration Day before 1937), or even today, January 17th (Benjamin Franklin Day).

I admit that my preoccupation with how well (or how poorly) I do in a class commits me to a certain position of nerdiness that I suppose I am comfortable with.

The point is, for people like me — who cannot relax and finally release themselves from the tight grip of classes that should feel completed until the very last grade comes in — the break has not been much of a break at all.

As of today at around 4 p.m., 12 days have elapsed since I was finally able to feel those first sweet moments of relief. The problem is, of course, is that minutes later, I realized that the book lists for the spring semester had been posted on Kennel Bookstore’s Web site.

There I was, thinking about school again.

At this point, I probably wouldn't have objected too strongly to imposing some sort of university-sanctioned punishment on offending professors.

One solution might be to equate, with each day past the deadline, a 5 percent penalty: each student has an additional 5 percent added to his or her grade.

Perhaps if the wait exceeds a certain amount of time, the grade coming from the final test is reverted to 100 percent.

Maybe even let the professors choose — professors need choices.

In any case, the problem is not limited to students like myself, who are unable to give themselves a break until they are certain that they deserve a break.

It would be easy to place the blame entirely on the professors, but consider for a moment their plight: buried in final papers and exams, they have an even smaller opportunity for relaxation.

So, because it is absolutely necessary to blame somebody for this problem, I elect the Scheduling Office.

It’s nothing personal, and I’m not even entirely sure, but it sounds like they might have something to do with scheduling things such as (though indirectly) the number of days in a row that I am able to stay in bed until the late hours of the afternoon and the number of days that actually have to plan on wearing pants at all.

At the heart of this problem is the fact that the fall semester did not officially end until December 22nd (possibly National Date Nut Bread Day), which presented me with the additional obstacle of trying to shop for every person that I’m supposed to care about (or was supposed to have cared about — the list has changed slightly since) within the 48 hours succeeding the official end of the semester.

I also didn’t get to see nearly as many holiday displays as I would’ve liked to, didn’t drink enough cups of hot cocoa, didn’t throw nearly enough snowballs — not a single one.

I believe my problems would have been solved had we gotten out of school just one week earlier, though four or five would’ve worked just as well.

Here’s to hoping that summer break works out a little bit better — it’s coming just in time for Visit Your Relatives Day.

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