It’s all fun, games, sleeping until 12, and binge watching that Netflix series you’ve already seen 3 times… until someone releases a ‘Snow Day’ calculator. Stormy nights brought about Twitter feeds with live updates of cancellations and the inevitable screen-shotted pictures of the ‘good news’ seconds after it hits the web. The three text messages, two emails, and a voice mail from the University alerting students of the cancellation brought joy….the first four times (okay, maybe every time). Except flash forward to now, with roughly 3 Mondays, 2 Tuesdays, and a Wednesday yanked from the academic calendar due to weather, it’s clear the snow has put a serious dent in the spring semester. Most students can be heard discussing how they feel the semester hasn’t even started, some professors have proceeded trying to give out midterms after 3 class sessions have met, and some still can’t seem to remember where their classrooms are, especially if it’s a class that only meets on Monday. Even with the added relaxation, many students are dealing with major internal conflict about how their once wished for day(s) off is the last thing they want anymore.
How could snow days ever be a bad thing? For starters, the expected work to be assigned on any given syllabus has found its way to becoming crammed into the same week, creating double the work that needs to be completed in a period of time. In addition, many professors have been having students rely on online homework to learn, a challenging task when being quizzed and tested on information with little to no actual in-class learning. More importantly, however, with the recently released ‘snow day calculator’, students have started to take a serious look at the financial ticket price of time spent sleeping and doing … well, nothing. Sure, professors always tell you to calculate the math of what that class you chose to skip would actually cost you price wise, but when you’re missing roughly 18 classes or so when you’d rather be there (who would have thought), the financial loss doesn’t seem so minor anymore. Some scholarships offered by Universities for things such as work study are roughly about $1,800 per year, making most of these aids almost already completely absorbed by the off days alone. Suffolk University has taken this into consideration, for starters, revoking the President’s Day holiday, and has now moved forward in replacing a Friday (a day off for not all, but a decent amount of students) with a Monday schedule, including a tentative Saturday penciled into the calendar.
Although some students may drag their feet to class on a Saturday morning, or cancel their Friday work shift with dismay, it’s evident that the price of education is more valuable than many once recognized, and has definitely for the most part been taken for granted. Boston may be facing #Snowmagddeon2k15, but it’s a refreshing twist of fate to see many students excited to opt for school over food and Netflix, eager to get back (and hopefully stay) in the classroom. Besides, the next season of Orange is the New Black won’t be released until June anyway.