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.