If only I had known.

Just two years ago, when I was but a naïve freshman, I spent my reading days before final exams unappreciatively, ignorant of their impending fate.  Little did I know that as my courses were to become harder and harder I would be given less and less time to prepare for finals. Sadly, reading days, a staple of finals preparation, were apparently deemed unnecessary by those in charge of the university’s academic calendar a few semesters ago.

I have sadly heard from students and professors alike that the removal of our reading days was made as an administrative attempt to curb pre-finals partying among us crazy college kids.  Boy, are we crazy.  Those papers, those baskets full of library books—one need only pay a visit to Fondren (or “Party HQ,” as I like to call it) in the wee hours to see the party-hard attitude that characterizes students during finals week.

Deemed unfit to exercise the temperance and self-control necessary to govern our own academic and social behavior, we instead have the university making those decisions for us.  For the university, the logic is simple: no reading days, no partying.

The problem lies in the fact that it is not at all that simple.  For most, the sad truth of it all is indeed the opposite—no reading days means no time to read.  Preparation for finals is, according to the calendar, supposed to occur at the beginning of this week.  By the time you read this article, you better have gotten the majority of your studying done for your Wednesday finals, or else.

Without reading days, we have been robbed of the respite necessary to enable study uninterrupted by group meetings and preparation for class.  Frustratingly, despite looming exams, extracurricular meetings are still a part of Monday and Tuesday’s routine. 

Essentially, the students being punished are not those who party (who will no doubt engage in festive behavior with or without the extra break) but rather those who care to prepare for their finals.

If SMU wants to enter its second century as a premiere academic institution, it should prove to its students that it cares about academics.  Depriving us of a fighting chance to master and re-master a semester’s worth of material for our cumulative finals is an unnecessary blow to that goal.  I guarantee you students at universities the likes of Harvard or Yale have reading days, so why not at SMU?

From before the moment freshman year even begins, SMU students are reminded of the school’s academic rigor and commitment to excellence.  Is it too much to ask, then, that we be given the tools necessary for an even basic level of success?

Rebecca Quinn is a junior art history, Spanish and French triple major. She can be reached for comment at [email protected].