Well this is strange, coming back to Princeton after a THREE week break. Over this break I, of course, took the time to catch up and review any readings/lecture slides I didn’t feel entirely comfortable with. I also wrote, and edited three times, my entire JP, which isn’t due until April (since economics requires only one). Coming back for reading period, I need only prepare for a concert for my MUS 310 seminar (Friday at 8pm in Taplin Hall. Everyone should totally attend!), which, if possible, I would have also done early.
If this sounds like the exact opposite of your break, then before fretting that you couldn’t possibly compete with my totally honest depiction of my winter break, perhaps we should reflect more closely on the nature of reading period. While I know it’s technically called reading period, mentally everyone kind of treats it like a week because we tend to block things into familiar units. The university, in its almighty foresight, was smart enough to give us one and half to two and a half extra days (depending on if you start counting the week on Sunday or Monday) more than a week in order to finish all of our written work. It’s like it has procrastination already factored in!
Additionally, over a week and a half of exams is a far more generous window than many other schools. So as much all you engineers and over-achievers have managed to give yourself five exams as well as a few twenty page papers and a presentation and group work and oversight of the publication of your latest novel going to press the same day that you have the second batch of three exams since they couldn’t reschedule your exam period in any way that could leave you with just two on two separate days, we actually have it pretty good over here.
Yes, it does kind of suck to have a month between your last class and your first final. A month is a long time (almost enough to beat Skyrim!). At the end of the day though, I kind of like our strange outlandish schedule. To the outside it says, “Look at those elite douchenozzles and their pretentious exam schedules,” but to me it says, “More time at Princeton!” Because when you think about it, exams or not, is there anywhere else you want to be?
