Since I am somewhat of a west coast college connoisseur (2 community colleges and 3 universities for those keeping track), I have sampled several different semester/quarter systems and final schedules. At USC we had two 15-week terms per year, instead of the three 10-week terms here at OSU. Each term at USC we had what I call an official dead week which meant that after the last week of classes we had an entire week without classes to prepare for our exams the following week. OSU decided, however, that they are going to call week 10 “dead week” except that we are still required to attend all of our classes. As far as I can tell, the only difference between dead week and a regular week is that professors are “encouraged” to refrain from having any large projects or tests due that week, leaving only the weekend for open study days to prepare for finals (unless you are a business major like myself and rarely have classes on Fridays, which is another commentary altogether).
The only thing accomplished by declaring week 10 “dead week” is that it forces professors to cram all of their final project/paper due dates into week 9, which causes infinitely more stress on students than just allowing deadlines to fall within week 10. I do understand that it takes much more time to prepare for a final after 15 weeks of class than for a class that only spanned 10 weeks, which is why I am not suggesting that OSU give an entire week of study time before finals. The only thing that would accomplish would be to increase revenue for the bars during that week. Believe me, you should see the bars during the first week of classes when there is minimal homework weighing on our minds. I just think that this is a good example of OSU’s misguided attempts to help students and missing the mark.
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