Waking up and going to school last Wednesday was awfully tough after a magnificent homecoming weekend. Despite the marking period ending on Friday, we had festivities like Bad Day to be a Pumpkin, the homecoming video and a football game to look forward to. Plus, the dance the next day was followed by Halloween and another two days off! While this year was unique because of the Tuesday we didn’t have school due to elections, this extra day off after the professional day needs to stay. Planning to have homecoming on the same weekend as Halloween was a superb idea, but two days off must be allocated to students with the continuation of this tradition to allow students to gather themselves and complete their homework before heading back to school.
After hearing about all of these events being crammed into a three-day span of three days, I immediately visualized the cast of The Hangover, the movie which the homecoming video was based off of, waking up the following day after a wild bachelor party the night before, having no recollection of anything that happened a mere couple of hours ago. While this may be an overwhelming situation to contemplate if we had to go to school on Tuesday, it actually turns out to be quite manageable when having two days off instead of one.
It is important to remember that there are many other events that take place not directly affiliated with the school’s homecoming game or dance over the weekend. For example, if planning to attend homecoming, it is very common for a person to go with a group of friends. They usually meet somewhere before the dance to take pictures and eat dinner. After the dance, there are often a variety of after parties to choose from further, pushing back students’ bedtime.
Even though many students pull an all-nighter on homecoming night, many do it again on Halloween. Whether they plan to go trick-or-treating with their friends, go to a party or a combination of both, once more many students usually do not arrive home until the wee hours of the morning. It would clearly be unreasonable to ask a student to prepare to go to school after only one day of rest. Is it too much to ask for an extra day so we don’t pass out in school?
Upon hearing about this year’s schedule, many parents and teachers had the same immediate thought as me: party overload. It is essentially a “fall break” similar to one that college students receive. We have one in the winter, spring and summer, so why not in the fall too? Students would just be getting a well-deserved break after a stressful first quarter.
Many students seem to assume that we always have the day off after Halloween, a teacher workday, because of this holiday. This is simply not true. Halloween does not dictate when we have a day off. The schedule for the last couple of years has worked out like this causing it to appear like we have the day off because of Halloween. If quarter ended too soon or too late, we would be going right back to school after a long Halloween night.
