Calling all McGill University students and faculty members to action:
We’ve established in my latest blog post that McGill University is not planning on implementing a Fall Reading Week—at least not anytime soon. However, what if together, as a student body, we were able to convince the administration to improve our current Winter Reading Week? I urge all McGill students and faculty members to sign this petition to ban professors from assigning exams, quizzes, or papers due within the first three days upon return from Winter Reading Week. The goal of this petition is to get 10, 000 signatures and submit it to the Students Society of McGill University (SSMU). The SSMU executives can then address the petition to Chancellor, Suzanne Fortier, and Deputy Provost, Ollivier Dyens, (Student Life and Learning). These two administrators have the authority to enforce this ban and make the necessary changes to the academic calendar.
Within the first couple of days after Reading Week, I had a quiz, a midterm, a paper, and an assignment due. Let’s also not forget about all the readings I was also supposed to keep up to date on. On average, I have over 300 pages of readings to do for all 5 of my classes. (There was no exception made during Reading Week). Needless to say, I did not have much time to relax during my “week off”. The sad thing is that this isn’t a unique case—many other of my friends find themselves in a similar situation. This is why I am advocating on behalf of all McGill students and urging staff members to support this petition.
Students bend over backward trying to maintain a decent GPA, complete assignments on time, and keep their heads above water during midterm and final season. This struggle doesn’t stop just because they have a week off in March. In fact, many students complain that during and following their Reading Week, they are still overwhelmed with stress—perhaps even more so. I surveyed a couple of my friends to inquire about why this may be. There seemed to be a general consensus that because there’s a lot of work that gets assigned the following week after Reading Week, they could not treat Reading Week as a “real break”.
McGill University is one of the most competitive and demanding schools in Canada. This status puts a lot of pressure on students to succeed. (Arguably, students put this pressure on themselves). However, due to McGill’s notoriously bad mental health services, students are left without the proper infrastructure to help them cope with their mental health. Hopefully, this ban will reduce exhaustion, immense anxiety, the trauma students associate with their academic issues, and the ideation of suicide, reported by the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services.
Some professors are making changes in the way they organize their courses. Dr. Jonathan Sterne and Dr. Darin Barney, from the Communications department, Dr. Michelle Baert, from the Department of Political Science, and Dr. Casey McCormick from the Cultural Studies department at McGill University seem to be ahead of the curve when it comes to accommodating their students’ needs. Dr. Sterne said there have been studies demonstrating that students feel most stressed around midterms. So he doesn’t schedule any midterm; instead, his evaluations focus on a variety of random in-class assignments and papers. Similarly, Dr. Barney uses pop quizzes and a take-home exam to evaluate his students. By separating the weight of the grade in smaller components, this helps reduce students stress. This evaluation method also helps students stay on top of course load because they are evaluated regularly. This is a better alternative than only having two exams during the semester, which usually intices procrastination. Additionally, both professors drop the lowest grade received for a quiz/in-class assignment, which allows room for error. Dr. Baert said that she allows a flexible due date for her assignments (within reason) because she understands that students have other things due for other classes. Also, she says realistically she can’t grade them all at the same time. Similarly, Dr. McCormick says that “when she first started teaching, [she] was super strict about deducting points for late work, but now [she] realizes that the most important thing in any course is that the student walks away with new knowledge and skill—not that they met every deadline.”
As someone who has taken classes with all these four professors, I can attest that their outlook on evaluations helped reduce stress. Their course structures are fair and allow for more flexibility. In turn, this helped relieve some of the pressure I felt to accomplish everything on my to-do list—especially during Reading Week. With these classes, I felt that it was easier to find balance between respecting deadlines and my mental health. More specifically, I didn’t feel like it was a crime to choose sleep over staying up till the crack of dawn to finish an assignment.
So why is it then that not all professors accommodate their students, especially around Reading Week? Dr. McCormick thinks that “a lot of professors assign work over Reading Week due to overall time constraints in the semester. 13 weeks is not a lot of time, especially with the two-week add/drop period in which enrolment is still in flux. My personal decision to assign work over Reading Week comes from the fact that many of my students have midterms just before the break, and I would rather not overwhelm them at that point—instead giving (hopefully) manageable assignments to be completed in a less stressful time frame”.
This increase in professors’ awareness of student stress, is definitely an improvement. As suggested by Dr. McCormick, “open lines of communication between students and professors throughout the entire semester in terms of workload is the most important strategy. Professors should have flexibility with deadlines, and students should respect the goals of the course”. However, not every professor is as accommodating as professors Sterne, Barney, McCormick, and Baert. So by having this ban, Professors will have to reevaluate the structure their course. Hopefully, their newly improved structures will be more flexible in terms of deadlines—primarily after Reading Week. I strongly believe that this will help level out the playing field and allow students to find a greater balance between self-care activities and school work during their Reading Week. Additionally, by signing this petition this will hopefully serve as the first step to communicating our needs to professors and our administration.
Please sign this petition if you feel the same way! Together we can, and will make a change.
Coffee & Vodka Sodas 