Students could not be more thankful for a much-needed break from the semester. Last week, Montclair State University students enjoyed their Thanksgiving break and got a nice long weekend to spend with their loved ones.
However, not all is as relaxing as it seems.
Montclair State announced that the week after Thanksgiving break would be a little different, Thursday classes will be held on Wednesday as well as Thursday.
They stated in an email to faculty and students, “Just a friendly reminder that the following are scheduled class make-up days due to the shortage of Thursday class meetings. The University has made a provision for Thursday class content to be made up accordingly.”
While to administrators this doesn’t seem like a big deal, for some students this is a massive inconvenience.
For starters, everyone’s schedule has been set. Unlike high school, it’s not as easy to just switch classes around for the day because everyone would be in school anyways.
As The Montclarion, Wednesdays are a huge work day for us and when we hold our general body meetings. Now, our staff will be discombobulated with everyone coming in and out to go to their classes.
Obviously, we are not the only ones affected.
Other students have other responsibilities they have to take care of or have jobs on Wednesdays.
With the way classes are scheduled, pairing up on Mondays and Thursdays as well as Tuesdays and Fridays, a lot of students have the day off on Wednesdays. Wednesday is the perfect day to schedule a shift or have the day off to do projects.
People who schedule their shifts every Wednesday, now miss a day of pay just to do the classes that they will have the next day. That could be a whole $50 or more taken from one’s weekly paycheck.
Honestly, the post-Thanksgiving schedule is a huge inconvenience and makes little to no sense logically. Now, because of one Thursday missing from our schedule, we have to miss our Wednesday and have two Thursdays back to back.
We don’t even get a makeup day for Friday, which we also missed for Thanksgiving break.
This could probably be because students also missed a Thursday due to President Jonathan Koppell’s investiture on Sept. 15 earlier this semester. One could argue that was also a waste of a day and could have been just optional to go to class or not.
Not to mention the fact that the whole point of changing our class schedules was to extend common hours for clubs and now this predicament is intruding on that fact. College activities and clubs are just as important as classes and shouldn’t be disregarded in this situation.
Some rely on a daily routine to have some semblance of structure in their lives. It is disrupting work shifts, class schedules and extracurricular activities. A student’s life is not only their academic course load.
While we can’t change the schedule now as it has passed, for future years, the administration can take these points into account and just let a day off be a day off with no consequences.
