With a new semester come lots of new changes, both fun and not so fun. The good being new people, new classes, new events, etc. The not so fun being a new class schedule that adds ten minutes to all classes. Of course, for our freshman there is a bright side, Western Heritage in a Global Context is five minutes shorter this semester. However, what do these extra minutes added or subtracted actually mean?
After talking to a lot of students there is a consensus, it is undesirable. Even with just a few minutes added the classes seem longer. A lot of students are having a hard time focusing through the entire class.
Not only do the students not like the new schedules, but the professors are having trouble keeping up too. In my own classes I have been let out up to 20 minutes early because my professors don’t know when class gets out. Other freshman in Western Heritage have been late to their classes right after because the professors don’t remember the new times. Freshman Tory Levite recalls that, “first day of classes I was late for my second class of the day because my Heritage professor thought our class ended at 10:35 instead of 10:30”.
This schedule is a change from the old one that we have had for several years. Why did we put a new schedule in place? My understanding is that the accreditation board was unhappy with the amount of time Eckerd student’s actually spent in class. Apparently we weren’t actually getting our full 17.5 hours a week.
This new schedule is a big change but a necessary one for Eckerd to keep growing as the excellent college it is. Hopefully all our students and professors will get used to the new schedules soon and be able to enjoy their extra time in class.