Spring Break
Published on Mar 9, 2007 at 3:58 pm.
2 Comments.
Filed under college teaching.
Well, I just finished teaching my last class for the week. My college is having its spring break this next week. So, there are no classes until the following Monday. I’ll be in and out, so I might not be posting regularly this next week.
I got to thinking about spring break. Why do we have a break in the middle of the term? Now, don’t get me wrong, I am looking forward to the break. After all, I am utterly worn out. This has been a tough semester so far. But, when I was in school myself, I never got a spring break. That is, not until I got to college. Now, all the schools around here seem to get a spring break, too.
I did a little searching on the internet for the history of spring break. I didn’t go back and look at actual documents from colleges, or even newspaper articles for when they first adopted spring break, so what I came up with may be a bit suspect. I found several spring break sites on the internet that claim that spring break festivities can be traced back to some wild ancient Greek and Roman festivals. Of course, those sites were promoting spring break packages full of partying. That, of course, is what many college students do all break. Many, but not all. Every semester I find a number of my students actually use the time to catch up.
I was always one of the boring students who was behind at that time of the semester, and catching up was something that I used the week for. That, and just relaxing. I went to college at Duke, and the big hot spot for people in those days was Fort Lauderdale. I never went. Of course, I always tend to go the other direction from the crowd. They go to the beach, I go to the mountains. Everyone else heads south, I head north. I like my space, and going someplace where there are hundreds of thousands of others going at the same time just seemed crowded to me.
And, from other sites that I read, spring break in the US colleges started with an academic purpose anyway. A Wikipedia article suggests that spring break’s origins go back to World War II, when engineering students took time off in the spring to help work on ways to counter German U-boats. That plus other sites suggest that the tradition continued after the war for engineering students to take a week or two in the spring for “hands on” learning opportunities. Other majors followed, but the event gradually morphed into lighter activities and then into time off. Spring break apparently really took off as a break from studies rather than hands-on learning after the 1960’s movie “Where the Boys Are”, which featured sun, sand, and romance in Fort Lauderdale (securing that city’s reputation as a spring break site for years to come). My understanding is that things got out of hand, eventually, so the city passed laws that many of the college students saw as too restrictive, so they moved the parties elsewhere, but that all happened after I had moved back to Texas.
I still use spring break to catch up. It is a good time to meet with colleagues, get research done, and so forth. I do yard work (last year, I repaired the fence in my back yard), home repairs, and so forth. It gives me a break in which I am not so frantic in my schedule, and that is nice.
And, I am really looking forward to my break!
-Astroprof
Seeking Solace on March 10, 2007 at 9:21 am: 1
Enjoy your time off!!!
Future UNMC MD on March 16, 2007 at 11:25 pm: 2
What?! Does this mean that you won’t miss us (your students) just a little tiny bit?
I hope you enjoyed your vacation:)