Letters to the Editor

Sentence too severe for involvement in riot

This letter is in response to Letrell Crittenden’s column on an extended study break before finals week. In my nearly four years at Penn State, I have learned that most students, including myself at times, try to find the easiest possible way out of situations in both their academic and personal lives. When finals week rolls around, students often are asked to buckle down and give a little more effort than they normally would during the course of the semester.

It seems that when life gets a little harder, all we want to do is cry about it. Please. Suck it up and deal with it. Life won’t always consist of 40-hour work weeks, eight hours of sleep a night and free weekends. Sometimes workloads are light. Other times work piles high and you have to bite the bullet and get things done. When you get out into the real working world, you can consider yourself lucky if you only have two "finals weeks" each year.

Furthermore, Crittenden remarked that the last week of classes consists mostly of evaluations and wasted time. If this is the case, then taking a couple hours to attend these classes won’t be very detrimental to one’s mental state, and the rest of each day is available for study time and/or relaxation.

Finally, the number of in-class credit hours cannot be changed. Therefore, the addition of study days before finals would have to prolong the schedule, as study days cannot simply replace class days. I don’t know how everyone else feels, but after 15 weeks of classes, I am ready to take my finals and get out of here. I don’t want to lengthen the semester any longer than is necessary. The solution here is to learn some time-management skills so you don’t leave all your studying till the last weekend. More than 340,000 Penn State alumni have made it through finals week, and I’m sure you can too.

Jeff Shumas
senior-management science and information systems