Many schools across the United States have had spring break fall victim to the Covid-19 pandemic. Many campuses have come to the conclusion that it would be beneficial to eliminate the spring semester vacations in an effort to limit student travels in order to prevent the spread of COVID. For this same safety reason, many schools also cancelled their fall breaks and will not have their students return after Thanksgiving break.
Many schools are following the same pattern of starting two weeks later than usual in order to give students enough time to quarantine themselves if they have gone to visit family during the holidays of Christmas and New Years. Although these efforts are meant to curve the spread of the Coronavirus, one does have to wonder what type of mental toll this will take on students as they have to power through the entire semester with no end in sight.
Something that has been noted during the spring semester for most schools, is that they have built in a few days as “study days” so students can take a break from regular class; however, these days are built into the middle of the week and so do not allow for a three day weekend. This was an intentional part of the spring semester plan done by the universities as they do not want students to travel away from campus for extended periods of time. Unfortunately for students, this means that they will have to go without seeing their families for months at a time unless they come down to visit their students. Many students are not blessed to be within driving distance of their families in order to spend quality time with them. Being as family is an integral part of keeping a healthy mindset, one has to wonder whether this is actually a good idea in keeping families so far apart for so long.
Additionally, many students are already finding semesters, like the fall semester, to be very exhausting and hard to finish out strong. Students are already beginning to stress about the impending doom we call spring semester. It is not that students just want to party and travel, but it is that students want to have a break from classes and a chance to take time for themselves. Spring break has gotten a bad reputation in the past for being all about partying, but now it is becoming a saving grace for many students that are falling behind in classes or just want the chance to mentally unwind with friends and family.
Schools have said that they are doing everything within their power to make students feel like they are right at home, but nothing really makes a student feel like they are at home than actually being home. We understand the severity of the Coronavirus and we know we need to do everything we can to stop the spread, but should it be at such a high cost of losing out mental health?