The holiday season is right around the corner and for many, the holidays are an excuse to spend time with family, watch movies, eat good food and sip hot cocoa by the fireplace. For college students, specifically, the holidays are an excuse to sit back and relax without having to do any school work.
After being busy for the last 14 weeks, Thanksgiving break is the first time in over three months students can try and let their brains rest and recharge. Thanksgiving break is also the first time for some students to see their family after not seeing them since the beginning of the school year in August.
But all of these things are hard to do in the short three days San Diego State gives its students off.
SDSU students should be given the full week of Thanksgiving break off and here’s why:
Many students cannot afford to travel home for the short three days we get off of school.
SDSU has a lot of out-of-state students who pay thousands of dollars more in tuition than an in-state student does. Plane tickets are already expensive and during the holidays, prices double (and even triple) in cost. If it costs a couple hundred dollars to fly to northern California during Thanksgiving, imagine how expensive it must be to fly to the East Coast?
Due to these insane prices, students from the East Coast and other parts of the country find themselves staying in San Diego for Thanksgiving break. Flying home on a Tuesday or Wednesday and coming back on a Saturday or Sunday just isn’t worth the price to some.
If students choose not to fly home for Thanksgiving and do not have close family or friends nearby, they are forced to spend the holiday alone in their dorm room.
No one should ever have to spend the holidays alone.
If SDSU gave students the full week off of school, out-of-state students could leave on the Friday or Saturday before Thanksgiving, giving them over a week to enjoy time at home with their family and, not to mention, it’s more worth it to spend the money on a plane ticket.
Students are burnt out by this point in the semester and deserve a longer break before heading into finals.
During fall semester, there is no real break for students to take a step back and let their minds relax a bit. Thanksgiving break and finals are so close together that students still have to work on assignments and study during their three-day break.
Full-time college students have busy schedules — some have jobs, some have responsibilities with other organizations, some have to cook everyday because they don’t have a meal plan and some students barely have any time to even sleep.
In the spring, students get a whole week off in the middle of the semester which allows them to take a mental and physical break. With only three days off in the fall, students don’t have the adequate time they need to recharge themselves before heading into finals.
By giving students the whole week off, students would have plenty of time to catch up on sleep, have a mental break and spend time with family before having to come back to school to study 24/7 for the dreadful and stressful finals week.
Most professors already cancel class the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving anyways.
Professors work hard and long hours too. Going from teaching multiple classes a day and staying up late grading papers, professors deserve an adequate break for themselves.
For many professors, this is the only chance they get to travel to go visit family outside of San Diego. Therefore, to take advantage of their time off, they end up canceling classes on Monday and Tuesday during Thanksgiving week.
However, for those students who have a professor who cancels class on Monday but their other professors don’t follow suit, they find themselves stuck here for an extra day when they don’t need to be.
It would make it easier on professors’ schedules, as well as students, to give them the whole week off for Thanksgiving break.
As an SDSU student who desperately needs a mental and physical break from school right now, I know how helpful it would be for my fellow peers and I to receive a whole week off of school before heading into one of the most hectic weeks of the semester.
So, SDSU, can students have the entire Thanksgiving week off?
Taylor Harris is a junior studying journalism. Follow her on Twitter at @taylorharrisjms.
