You are in class, the clock is pushing toward the 50-minute mark and you need to ask the professor a question, but there’s one problem – you have a class right after. So you’re forced to put off the question, jump out the door and walk briskly to your next course.
Most standard college courses have to meet 150 minutes a week, and this article is not questioning that policy, because it’s standard for semesters in general and should not change. Rather, this is asking for a change to the amount of time between those courses.
Ten minutes between classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays is just not enough to make it to the classroom without being on the brink of exhaustion or being required to have some form of superpower to carry yourself up to the stairs at a rapid pace or teleport the elevator.
This is not necessarily a dire complaint or something that dramatically needs to be changed. Rather, it’s an attempt to take a step back and realize what people have to go through on a daily basis to get things done. For example, to walk from the north side of the Grove to Bondurant probably takes nearly 12-15 minutes for me.
So, yes, you could try to schedule your courses so they’re not back to back, but that is not the point. Sometimes you have no choice or that is the only time a certain course is offered.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, those 15 minutes between class meetings come in handy, and an extra five minutes can, surprisingly, do a lot for your life.
Though changing the schedule might bring extra stress to those who must plan and implement this idea, I am asking for a poll of students or a public forum to address such complaints.
With a growing campus and people moving at break-neck speed, having one class end at 8:50 a.m. and the next one start at 9:05 a.m. would be remarkable. Such a systematic change would allow our community to slow down and take a breath or make an important phone call that just might be needed in our complex lives.
I wrote this piece because the complaints about scheduling are always brief, but over time, they add up and make me think that it would be a great idea to at least consider a change. As our university continues to grow, 10 minutes just won’t be enough to get somewhere without disturbing a class by entering late or leaving early.
I do not have the answer, but all of us could come up with one together, and, honestly, that is what matters the most.
Jonathan Lovelady is a junior economics major from Los Angeles.
