Save Our Sanity: Reform the Calendar

I just got a postcard from a friend of mine on vacation in Tahiti. The picture in front is of a bunch of smiling, tanned people in bathing suits on a beautiful, sun-drenched beach. The note on the back is short. "Having a great time," she wrote. "Wish you could be here." As if I wasn't bitter enough, still shivering from having just run over to the Mather mail boxes through the cold of a January morning in Cambridge, she signed a short P.S. at the bottom: "Hope finals are going well." I walked back to my room, to 45 pages of writing and two finals to study for, postcard in hand. The irony was so clear it was excruciating. Being in Cambridge in January, studying or taking finals and battling the cold winds, while the rest of the collegiate world is partying in some month-long, vacation-induced bliss, offers a perfect opportunity to analyze, objectively and carefully, the pros and cons of Harvard's unique school calendar.

There was a time when The New York Times had an annual tradition of printing a picture of the main reading room in New York's 42nd street library the day after Christmas. The room was always filled with earnest young college students studying for final exams. The Times' tradition no longer exists, but if it did, the majority of the sorry people studying in the middle of their winter vacations would be Harvard students. That is because most other schools have changed their schedule, starting the fall semester earlier and ending before vacation.

The benefits to that calendar are manifold. First, and most poignant at this moment, is that winter vacation can be a true vacation. As our schedule stands presently, we leave for vacation with the weight of finals looming over us. It is hard to relax fully when you have that unread Foucalt and the research for an unwritten tutorial paper--to say nothing of the CS assignment--staring at you from your open knapsack. During those moments when you are enjoying yourself, unfriendly images of dead theorists and live professors prance before your eyes. When you are working, you feel like a loser for spending your precious few days of vacation doing work.

Which brings me to benefit number two. Because we need to get back to school for two weeks of reading period and two weeks of finals before our fall semester is complete, our vacation is truncated immediately after New Year's. You've barely put away the confetti and the champagne before you're packing up and heading back to school, a measly two weeks after leaving Harvard. Were we to have finals before winter break, we could have three weeks--at a minimum--of uninterrupted and stress-free vacation, enough days to unwind from finals, spend the requisite time with family and--if you have the incentive and the cash--go away somewhere and still return to school refreshed. The way our schedule exists, it is difficult to really relax during vacation and highly unlikely that students return to school rejuvenated.

Benefit number three requires a little bit of foresight. As hard as it is to imagine now, come May the weather will be warm. And once again, while we are in finals, our friends at other, more considerate universities will be reveling in the first days of summer vacation. Although we do start later than those same friends, the lessons of simple economics help us understand that a few days at the end of the summer, when we are already satiated with relaxation, are worth significantly less than the same number of days at its beginning, when the very mention of vacation gets our salivary glands going.

As overwhelming as these benefits seem, there are some perks to the present system. The clearest one is reading period. If we wanted to have two weeks of reading period before finals, a luxury few other colleges offer, as well as finish before Christmas, we would have to start approximately three weeks before we do. That would have us beginning in the third week of August, cutting short internships and jobs that expect you to go through Labor Day. Further, many professors moan, starting before Labor Day would cut short their time on the Cape and at the Vineyard. However, starting in August, as most other Ivy-Leaguers do, seems a worthwhile tradeoff for finishing the semester before vacation, internships and the Vineyard notwithstanding. It would even be acceptable to shave four days off reading period and a few days off finals to allow us to begin a little later in the summer, still end early and have reading period in the middle.

A second factor the administration is always quick to point out is that orientation and, more importantly, Commencement dates have been planned since time immemorial. Many overeager family members have already booked hotel and plane reservations, to say nothing of the changes that would have to be made to the Courses of Instruction calendar. Although this consideration is significant (somewhat), it does not offset the clear advantages of a revamped schedule.

As pleasant as it is to receive postcards, I'd much rather be the one sending them.

Talia Milgrom-Elcott's column will resume next semester.