The university perspective on school breaks
In the wake of days filled with classes, a seemingly endless midterm season, and the weeks spent cramming for final exams, it’s hard not to appreciate the respite of a four-month-long summer break. But summers aren’t what they used to be. As people grow from school children to university students the meaning of this beloved time of year has evolved.
With people scattered during summer it can be difficult to conduct interviews; I was lucky (from the confines of Nova Scotia) to have a residence assistant, a teaching assistant, and a professor from last semester — Megan White, Jacqueline Gillis, and Eveline Adomait, respectively — willing to take the time to discuss their perspectives.
Megan White, a recent graduate of the biology program at the University of Guelph, spoke to The Ontarion about her experience of summer vacations. White commented that when she was a child, “Two to three months was a perfect amount [of time] to have a break from school and spend time with family.” On the other hand, as a university student, White explained that “[y]ou do have more time away from school, [but] all four months are spent working to earn money to pay for university.” “I still would not be able to save enough money to pay for my whole year at university,” said White, bringing to light a problem for many university students.At the University of Guelph, the subject of having a fall reading week, as many other Ontario universities do, has been discussed among students over the last couple of years. While a fall reading break hasn’t been implemented, White believes that “if we shorten our summer vacation, but add more breaks during the school year, it would be more beneficial to students’ mental health since stress levels will be the highest during the school year.”
The Ontarion also spoke to Jacqueline Gillis, a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science about the role of the summer months in her life.
“As a graduate [student] you’re balancing conferences, publications, any jobs you have, [and] working on your own research,” said Gillis. “I’ve found it immensely stressful sometimes. The summer is definitely necessary to recharge.”
Gillis also spoke to the implementation of a fall reading week from the perspective of a graduate student. “As an undergraduate, I probably would have loved it,” said Gillis. “It gets a bit trickier as a graduate student if you TA, because it would be difficult to not answer emails coming in from students who are just trying to work ahead or work on assignments due after the break.”
“I could see adding a couple Fridays [off] here and there being helpful for students,” Gillis said about the idea of more days off during the school year. “But not at all [helpful] for the administration, who would have to come up with a system to ensure that each course has had a sufficient number of lectures, labs, etc.” At the University of Guelph, a “summer vacation” technically doesn’t exist. There is a summer semester, but there are differences between the summer semester and the fall and winter ones.“The economics department only has Distance Ed[ucation] courses and they’re mostly taught by PhD students,” said Eveline Adomait, a professor in the College of Business and Economics. “We went through this class-cutting exercise years ago where we had to look at low enrolment courses and delete them, and most of the low enrolment courses were during the summer, so we deleted them.”
“The reason summer semesters work elsewhere is because of co-op, without that I just don’t see a summer semester working, you just require the students to be there and then they work in the fall, like they just work in alternate semesters, but it’s structured,” Adomait continued. “It’s very difficult for a student to do that, to say, ‘Oh, I’ll go to school in the summer and I’ll work in the fall. It also kind of wrecks their university experience, because going to school isn’t just about going to class, right? It’s about the ‘college life.’ And that happens fall and winter.” The reason why summer semesters work elsewhere is because of co-op. So, while there isn’t an explicit summer vacation, implicitly it appears that summers away from school are due to a variety of factors. As is the case with White and Gillis, students needing to fund their education would take the summer to work and from that, the university cuts some of their costs by not offering as many summer courses. Summer also provides a lot of seasonal job opportunities, meaning more students are likely to take the summer off to work if there are more jobs available during that time of year. As Professor Adomait said, with the added factor of the ‘university experience’ taking place in these fall and winter semesters, the decision of when to take time off to work becomes all the easier.
The life of a university student is vastly different than that of a grade schooler, and because of that, a word like “summer,” which floods the mind with memories of popsicles and beach days, can be replaced by office jobs and manual labour. But part of what summer means to university students is based on what they get out of it. For some it’s getting a job to pay for school, for others it’s traveling, and for others still it’s visiting friends or family. Perhaps in the future, the opportunity for a shorter summer semester with a few extra break days in the fall and winter semesters will happen, but as Adomait said, “This requires a group effort, and unfortunately, unless someone higher up initiates this, it’s very difficult.”
Photo Courtesy of Tianyi via CC0