Schedule Change Amplifies Stress Among Students

Before she knew it, the fall semester was over, and Jane W. Baldwin ’11, an earth and planetary sciences concentrator, found herself struggling to finish over reading period a final project worth 50 percent of her Applied Math 115 grade.

In past years, students spent roughly 40 hours on the mathematical modeling assignment over winter break, but this year’s calendar change meant that they faced a bigger time crunch before the end of the semester.

“I spent a lot of time thinking, ‘Was this something I screwed up? Could I have scheduled this better?’” Baldwin says about the project, which was assigned two weeks before Thanksgiving break. “Realistically, there was not enough time to allocate to something like that before reading period.”

Despite memories of a stressful reading period—not unfamiliar to many students this past semester—Baldwin says she ultimately prefers the new schedule. She got her finals out of the way and even got to spend more time with her boyfriend at Carnegie Mellon over January term.

“It was definitely worth the small increment of more stress,” Baldwin says.

Thanks to this year’s long-awaited calendar change, three days were shaved off of reading period, fall exams were moved before the winter break, and the College’s first ever J-Term was created.

But the changes caught many faculty and students by surprise, as they failed to adjust their class schedules and duly spread out their work to alleviate a build-up of stress toward the end of the semester.

College administrators attribute the unanticipated stress of the compressed semester to a lack of planning by both students and faculty, though proposals for rearranging vacation days in the fall semester are still up for discussion.

“We’ve heard there’d been some glitches,” said Dean of the College Evelynn M. Hammonds. “People didn’t quite take in what the change was and what they needed to do to adjust.”

IN A FRENZY

Dunster House tutor and English teaching fellow Sabrina Sadique recalls an overwhelming demand for office hours toward the end of last semester as students scrambled to finish final papers.

“[Professors] were trying to cram everything in the last minute,” Sadique says. “The [syllabi for many courses] just seemed to be the same syllabi they would teach anyway.”

Unable to help all the students “from all kinds of fields” who approached her, Sadique says she regularly extended her office hours until 2 a.m.

Echoing Sadique’s observations, Adams House Master John G. “Sean” Palfrey ’67 characterized the end of the semester as ”very badly managed” by faculty in general.

“I think that many of the faculty have to take this somewhat shortened term and take it somewhat more seriously and readjust their curriculum,” Palfrey says.

Some professors—such as Henri Zerner, who teaches History of Art and Architecture 10—say that the new semester schedule does not allow enough time to cover course material from previous semesters.

“I don’t like the new calendar,” Zerner says. “I think everything is extremely rushed, and students don’t really have enough time to absorb whatever the course was about.”

Zerner adds that students also had less time to work on end-of-term projects, such as final papers.

But David J. Malan ’99, who teaches the popular course Computer Science 50, says he adjusted his lesson plans and assignment due dates to reflect the calendar changes. Students were asked to submit final project proposals—which range from coding Google Android or iPhone applications, to designing Web sites—before Thanksgiving, or two weeks earlier than in past years.

“I think it worked out much better,” Malan says. “Everything was still very fresh in their minds.”

TIME MANAGEMENT

Like Baldwin, most students who left the bulk of their work until the end of the semester say they faced more work and tighter deadlines than in past years.

Yoseph S. Ayele ’11 admits that he could have reduced some of the stress with better planning.

“I think it takes some getting used to from our side,” Ayele says of the compressed time constraints. “Before we used to take a break [in the beginning of 10-day reading period] before studying for finals.”

R.J. Jenkins, the head teaching fellow for the popular “Lit and Sex” course English 154, says the loss of holiday break before exams was “really felt” by upperclassmen accustomed to the old schedule.

Freshmen, on the other hand, had a “very easy time” with the new calendar, Jenkins says, as it is “the only calendar they’ve known.”

Despite student complaints about the shortened semester, Dean of Undergraduate Education and Cabot House Master Jay M. Harris reports that the College saw the highest average grades in its history, with an increase in grade point average of one-hundredth of a point.

“Student performance overall did not suffer in any way,” he says. “That doesn’t mean a specific student was not thoroughly overwhelmed.”

Harris adds that he felt many of the concerns students raised may have been unfairly attributed to the calendar changes and that part of the problem lies in work habits, such as procrastination.

“Students should either not save as much [work] for reading period as they used to or not have as long a ‘Camp Harvard’ as they used to,” Harris says.

A ‘BIGGER REWARD’

Though the fall semester changes brought heightened stress at the end of the semester for many students, even those who vocalized the new schedule’s problems celebrated the stress-free J-Term.

Under the old schedule, many final projects and papers were due after the long winter break, and students only had a week of intersession between semesters. And impending exams and deadlines loomed during winter break.

“The way I saw it, we were getting a lot of work out of the way sooner, [with] a bigger reward at the end,” Romeo P. Alexander ’11 says. “If anything, last year was worse because professors assigned a ton of homework during Christmas break.”

Sadique, who says she talked with many stressed students during exam period, adds that students were able to recover and catch up on sleep during J-Term.

“All that labor that they complained about—they had forgotten about most of it by the time they came back from the longer vacation,” Sadique says.

VACATION DAYS?

While administrators concede the new schedule caused added stress this past semester, it is unclear whether there will be structural tweaks for the next academic year.

The College’s survey of undergraduate’s J-Term experiences—which had a student response rate of over 30 percent—yielded over 270 pages of comments from students, according to Harris, and administrators say they are waiting to pore through the feedback before deciding whether concrete action is necessary.

“We’ve heard complaints from students and faculty both that the end of the semester was too rushed and compressed—whether that’s really indicative of the broad feeling across the community or whether that’s really just a couple of vocal folks, we don’t know,” Harris says. “That’s why we did the survey.”

While the University sets the start and end dates of the academic calendar, College administrators say they are unsure whether they have the power to rearrange vacation days, such as creating a fall break or extending Thanksgiving break.

Harris says it is “premature” to discuss any changes to the academic schedule before survey results have been reviewed, though that and other options are “being looked at.”

—Staff writer Melody Y. Hu can be reached at melodyhu@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Eric P. Newcomer can be reached newcomer@fas.harvard.edu.