Next Friday, Peter J. Shields Library will be filled to the brim with students celebrating their dead day. While the lack of classes in favor of study time is appreciated, the Saturday finals are not.
For college students, Saturdays are sacred territory that shouldn’t be messed with. To take away a Saturday is to take away precious time where, well, we could be studying.
It makes zero sense to make Friday a dead day, install exams on Saturday, have no exams on Sunday and then resume finals on Monday. Why not just give us our Saturday back and then begin finals on Sunday? The stop-and-go and stop-and-go is disorienting, destroying our momentum, with our grades falling to “failing” in the process.
If the main argument against holding final exams on Sunday is for religious reasons, then we both understand and don’t understand. We understand because UC Davis should respect all students’ religious freedom. At the same time, leaving Sunday open is completely arbitrary, since some groups consider Saturday to be a religious day.
More than anything, though, we want consistency. This quarter students are facing this weird Friday dead day to Saturday finals situation. In the fall, we’re dandy: We have the whole weekend to study with exams lasting from Monday to Friday. In the winter, we’re frustrated: no dead day, with a final day of class on Monday, and then exams Tuesday through Saturday.
This is a serious problem that merits attention — but don’t look to us for a solution. We’re too busy studying for finals.
