written by Alaina Buckenroth

As Spring Break draws to a close, students and faculty return to schools, and some students are feeling the weight of assignments and deadlines as the semester begins to end.

A student from NCCC has given input on their feelings after the weeklong break. Abby Poczciwinski, a second-year student at NCCC says, “I feel very mentally exhausted and anxious to go back and get back in the routine of school.” She mentions how the buildup of stress from the beginning of the semester until now led to her vegging out for the entirety of Spring Break, trying to catch up on sleep, work, and regain balance of her mental health. Between seeing friends and dealing with a family emergency, she, “didn’t even have time to begin to think about doing my assignments that were due after break.” The semester was busy for her, with a loaded schedule and working after school and on the weekends, all she wanted was to prioritize seeing her friends and family. But with all the homework assigned to her over the break, she says it really was not much of a break at all. “If there’s work over a break, then it’s not really a break, because I can’t really decompress when there’s assignments hanging over my head.” Abby finally mentions how financial aid is only given up to six semesters, so she must cram as many classes as she can into one semester in hopes that she finishes in time, only to be overwhelmed with work, and ultimately fail a class due to lack of time.

Professors also have loaded curriculums that they have to fit into one semester, as well as make allotted time to review for finals and midterm exams; therefore, it leaves little to no time for them or the students to relax and soak in all the information thrown at them. When returning to campus, the general consensus I personally received from students and staff was that the break did not do much good in boosting morale for finishing the second half of the semester.

So, this raises the question; should students be assigned homework over Spring Break? How do teachers feel about assigning homework to students? Professor of Humanities here at NCCC, Mark Pietrzykowski, shared his thoughts on assigning homework over breaks, “Students need a chance to catch up, too, just like professors do. I know other professors do, but I’m not really sure why because I’ve never had the conversation with them.” He says it is not really a conversation professors have with each other, unless it is an administration regulated event where all teachers are providing input on their teaching styles. Therefore, students could run the chance of having all their professors assigning them homework over breaks, while other students have no homework whatsoever.

In hopes of resolving this issue, the faculty may want to come together to find a way to minimize stress amongst students and staff over any break during the school year, in regard to assigning homework.