Students are not back from winter break at the University of Missouri yet. I love this town when the students are gone. I should really get over to Flat Branch Brewery again before they all flood back into town.
I was driving through Stephens College campus today and noticed a huge number of students on their campus. I wonder if they’re on the quarter system? I know Columbia College is on the quarter system, so they’re already in school.
The University of Maryland was not on the quarter system, but they had a four-week winter semester right after Christmas (it may have even started before New Year’s).
I am kind of surprised that they haven’t standardized this kind of thing. Don’t get me wrong, though- I’m happy they haven’t standardized it too.
But if a regular semester is sixteen weeks (it is at the University of Missouri), how can you possibly make up the same amount of classroom work in four weeks, or even eight weeks (the length of the summer semesters at MU)?
I took summer classes for both undergraduate and graduate school. I would recommend that every student take summer classes- it’s far easier to get everything done to graduate on time, without overextending yourself with too many classes in the regular semesters. That’s true for both undergraduate and graduate students.
And there is no doubt in my mind that the shorter classes are easier. Sure, the professors may write the curriculum so that they’re covering the same amount of work, but it’s not really the case. Certainly it’s not at the same depth. I took my math requirement (the dreaded-by-all-the-liberal-arts-majors Math 10) in the summer, and though we had to spend an hour in class five days a week (instead of three days a week), everyone including the TA was on ‘summer time’. I would not have sat through that class in a regular semester. Too painful.
I was a senior with an English major when I took English 110, ‘Science Fiction’, (the number if which can be inferred to mean ‘very low-level’) in a four-week semester one summer. I cannot believe they gave me college credit for that class. I mean, I got college credit for that class. I even needed it for graduation because it was twentieth-century pop lit, and for some reason I didn’t have enough of that on my transcript, even though I took a lot of the women’s studies literature classes, and those are definitely twentieth-century. There was a reason at the time. I can’t remember it now. Anyway, we only read short stories, and only a few each day. With a regular English class during a regular semester, when the classes are each fifty minutes, three days a week, you’re often expected to polish off an entire novel before the next. (I’m not comparing this with other majors, by the way.) In English 110, we were in class for an hour and forty minutes five days a week. There was not much downtime to read entire novels.
Not that I usually read what I was assigned. I have stacks of books from my English major and library degree that I never read, even if I was supposed to. Even if I was tested on them later. Sometimes I wonder why I decided to do a library degree… but then I like my job, so it did work out.
I’m sure that proponents of the quarter system would argue its merits to the death, and I can’t say I have a problem with the idea of taking care of four semesters’ worth of requirements in a year, instead of three, or having half a year off to do other stuff… I’m assuming this is how the quarter system works. Maybe I’m wrong.
Anyway.
I just looked and MU’s classes don’t start until January 20th. So why are there so many people downtown today? Traffic seemed to bump this morning for no good reason.
All y’all, stay home! I want my nice quiet town for another ten days!
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