Finals week is full of stressing, screaming and sobbing. It is the bane of every college student’s existence. Okay, it’s really not that bad, but we love to complain here, so let’s continue. Christopher Newport University (the college I attend) has kindly attempted to make finals week a little easier by giving the Wednesday of finals week off, calling it Reading Day. I would like to kindly suggest we burn this day to the ground.
By University policy, students can have at most 3 finals in one day. Typically, when this occurs, the professor will allow the student to move their final to another time. Although two and a half hours are allotted for each final, the majority of these tests take max an hour. So, for each day of the week, you are testing for a max of two hours, giving you a solid 10-15 hours of studying each day–not to mention the Saturday and Sunday before finals.
I was so bored during finals week. There is so much free time. If you do not have time to study for your finals, please contact me with your reasons as to why. I guarantee you have plenty of time to study. Start studying right now. Start studying at the start of semester. Lack of time is not an excuse. On top of these hours upon hours of free time, my University decides to give a whole entire additional day for studying. This is not necessary. On top of it being completely useless, it pushes back finals to take place on Saturday. Yes, we have finals all day on Saturday.
The first thing I was told in coming to CNU, even by professors, is that everyone parties on Reading Day. In fact, it holds the same dangerous reputation as St. Patrick’s Day weekend for accidents and honor code violations.
I took an informal poll, however, and on this question about 60% responses were for keeping Reading Day to study, 12% were to keep it to party, and 23% were to get rid of it. So overall, the majority of respondents were for keeping Reading Day. This was of course a small pool of the population and were not random respondents. For those 60% who say they actually study on Reading Day, I question their validity as well as the necessity of the day to study. Perhaps I am completely wrong, and students are far more hardworking than I predict them to be. But, I don’t think I am.
Reading day was created with honorable intentions. I am here to say, however, please get rid of it. It pushes finals to Saturday, it causes more parties, and it is completely useless.