A Holiday Bonus?
By Michael Belinsky
Published on Thursday, January 24, 2008
To the Editor:
I disagree with Daniel Belkin's plea for the College to observe more federal holidays ("Give Me a Break," Jan. 23).
Belkin assumes that x-hours would "seamlessly recover the missed classes," just like they do for Winter Carnival. Not true! Imagine a Monday-Wednesday-Friday class that assigns 100 pages of reading for each lecture.
On a regular week, you read 300 pages. Now imagine that a cancelled Friday class is replaced by a Tuesday x-hour. Now you have to read 100 pages for Tuesday, for a weekly total of 400 pages.
Multiply that across your three classes and, for every post-holiday week, you get the workload-equivalent of taking four classes instead of three!
I don't know about Belkin, but I'd like my senior year to be just a bit easier.