Bentley,
Let me start off by saying that I do truly love being a student at Bentley University. I love going to school here and I love being a part of the Bentley community. However, despite my love for this institution, I NEEDED A BREAK. I think I speak for most Bentley students when I say that not having a spring break is one of the most abominable things to happen this year. While I appreciate Bentley attempting to care about our mental health through granting us a handful of random days off, sprinkled throughout the semester, I think the effort put into this was pretty minimal.
I understand the concept behind it—a couple of random days off does prevent people from traveling (to a certain extent). But here’s the thing: it isn’t preventing people from getting COVID, and it definitely isn’t improving students’ mental health. In fact, I would argue that the lack of a spring break actually played a large hand in causing the enormous COVID spike on campus. Let me explain why…
Everyone in life needs a break, but especially students. It doesn’t matter that we are college students and technically “adults.” We still need time off, and the fact that I can count the number of days we have had off, on one hand, is appalling. If anyone were to tell me that they genuinely believed students were meant to be able to focus, put their best efforts forward, and genuinely care about school/their education for the entire fall semester (with barely any time off) and then the entire spring semester (with basically no break), and then essentially the entire summer semester (which most students are doing), I would laugh in your face. Do you know what this does to students? It burns us out.
Since I cannot speak for everyone, I will speak for myself. I used to love school, going to classes and learning. It isn’t that I don’t love it anymore, but it’s just so much more difficult for me to invest myself and care about the outcome. I don’t feel like I am gaining anything from online classes, and I care less than I ever have about my grades. It isn’t because I am becoming a bad student, and it isn’t that I am letting myself fail all of my classes, but the fact of the matter is that I legitimately have run out of energy to invest in school. I am doing fine. I do my work, I get it done, it is relatively decent work, but it is definitely not my best work. Why? Because I don’t have the energy! I am so drained from missing my best friends, from being trapped inside so I don’t give my parents COVID, from spending two birthdays now completely alone… Are you picking up what I am putting down?
Do you now maybe understand why four random days off aren’t really cutting it for students’ mental health? Do you see why maybe we needed a real break, an actual spring break? A couple of consecutive days off to decompress, sit outside in the warm nice weather, to have a break from school? A REAL BREAK? Not a fake break where our future school work is looming over us because it is due in two days, so we waste our “mental health day” catching up on our homework anyways? Do you maybe understand why these sprinkled days off are kind of complete and utter nonsense?
Not only are these days off just a sorry excuse for Bentley to claim that they care about our mental health, but it is also one of the main reasons I think there has been such a huge COVID spike. I mean, seriously. What did Bentley think was going to happen when they don’t give their students a break, time for them to get away, time for them to safely plan a trip with proper testing and isolation and distancing? The students are going to improvise and do things the way they can, quickly and unsafely. Students are going to sneak away for quick weekend getaways, do things without proper thinking or planning, put others at risk unintentionally. Why? Because they need a break. They are exhausted. It is so incredibly draining and a bit unrealistic to expect students from the ages 18-22 to basically lock themselves down, isolate themselves, and obliterate their social life, for going on over a year now.
When you have thousands of college students, all of whom have been essentially put under lockdown, had their college experience stolen from them, lost their freshman orientation, couldn’t celebrate their 21st birthdays with their friends, couldn’t study abroad, missed their graduation, the list goes on… You have a lot of people who are already struggling with mental health, depression, and anxiety without the constant schooling. But then, you throw 24/7 classes and education in the mix, and you really are just demonstrating a blatant disregard for the mental, emotional, and physical health of your students.
I am not saying it is entirely Bentley’s fault for not giving us a spring break, as students definitely need to make better decisions, be more responsible and follow the guidelines Bentley has set. However, I am saying that Bentley did not do themselves a single favor by tossing us a couple of random days off when a ton of students already don’t have classes on those “mental health days.”
I still love Bentley, but I think they really did their students a disservice by not allowing us to have a proper and necessary break from constant school.
Sincerely,
A Student Who Really Needed a Break