If you’re reading this, it means we are back in school. We have all finally returned to campus after a three-week winter break, which I heard multiple complaints about last semester. Three weeks is a short break, which justifies the complaining, but even worse, the class start date was Jan. 3, only two days after the New Year.
For many students, especially international students, winter break is one of the few chances in the year they get to visit their families, myself included. If your family lives in another country or even in a state a little further away, most of the time it is not possible to visit family and friends on holidays such as Thanksgiving or spring breaks.
Winter and summer break are one of the few opportunities a lot of students have to go home, but I still think winter break is the most important of the two to be with family. That is because winter break comprises of a lot of holidays that center around people spending time with their friends and family.
I know that I have my traditions back home for the holidays and there is no one I would rather spend these days with other than my family. Knowing that classes resume as early as Jan. 3 killed my excitement to finally go home to Brazil and my family. Plus, because of COVID-19 restrictions and ticket pricing, I wasn’t even able to get a ticket to return to school in time for classes to start if I wanted to spend New Year’s Eve with my family.
I am pretty sure I am not the only international student who has faced challenges with classes returning so early and tickets being extremely expensive. It is important to note that this is not a problem for international students only, but a lot of domestic students have also struggled with similar problems. Some of them had to fly in during the holidays and missed New Year with their friends and family. Others had to pay for insanely expensive tickets to get back to school on time.
This leaves one alternative to explain classes starting so early; it must be good for the school since it is not good for students. It turns out that is also not true. Because this semester’s classes started so soon, some of the university’s employees are not legally allowed to work for a few days as the pay period has not started. This means some offices, such as the registration office, are closed until classes start.
There is really no reason why classes had to return so soon, except frustrating the students, it seems. For next year, NSU should take the students into consideration when creating the calendar and hopefully establishing a reasonable date for winter classes to return.
