How Thursday Became the New Friday

Parent Cafe
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<p>

<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/education/edlife/hafner.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/education/edlife/hafner.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>How times have changed.
I had a Freshman writing seminar (Fall of 1969) that met at 8am on Tuesday -Thursday and SATURDAY:). </p>

<p>(And I had to climb up hill to class and then climb up hill after class to get back down to the dorm - like an Escher drawing. :wink: <a href=“http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?53972+0+0+ggescher[/url]”>http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?53972+0+0+ggescher&lt;/a&gt; )</p>

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<p>And wouldn’t it be the case that, if colleges allow them to disappear, they are contributing – greatly – to the Thursday as weekend=drinking culture that they claim to rue?</p>

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<p>Absolutely, </p>

<p>The article goes on to report efforts to increase the number of early morning and Friday classes at a number of Colleges. </p>

<p>Not only to counteract a three day weekend “culture”, but to make better use of classrooms, labs and faculty.</p>

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<p>The Faculty might have something to say about that. Having a clear day for research going into the weekend can be very productive–or they just have a nice three day weekend every week. Either way it will be hard to reverse.</p>

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<p>Wouldn’t a “clear” Wednesday be just as useful? Back in the day, when I was at Wellesley, we had an unusual M-Thurs, T-Fri schedule with longer class “hours” for each session - so 2x/wk rather than 3x/wk for a typical class. Wednesday was research/study day. A lot more likely to be used that way, I’m guessing, than a Friday.</p>

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<p>I hear that it’s commonly called “Thirsty Thursday” :eek:</p>

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<p>Thursday night I noticed that several of my friends at other schools had ‘it’s the weekend’ away messages up. </p>

<p>What I did today (Friday):
2am: Give up on thermo Matlab assignment and eventually go to sleep
9am: Wake up and review figures in a paper I had to present for immunology
10am-noon: Immunology
noon: lunch
1pm-3pm: Human Molecular Genetics in the Age of Genomics
3pm-5pm: Continued attempts at thermo and Matlab</p>

<p>::Is jealous::</p>

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<p>According to my Husband, back in the "old days " (late 70’s), easy majors such as Business had no Friday classes. But “real” majors, such as Engineering, had Friday classes.</p>

<p>signed,
wife of an Engineer</p>

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<p>

I wonder if we should start a club. DH thinks anyone who doesn’t take <em>at least</em> 18 credit hours is slacking. If he were a physician, he’d probably still be championing the 48-hour rotation for interns because “it was good enough for us.” :p</p>

<p>signed,
wife of an Engineer, too</p>

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<p>I’ll join that club! H works as a software engineer, but his degrees are in math. It takes a certain kind of understanding to be married to the engineering/math types, I think, especially if you are an arts/literature/social science type. His standards are very high in most things, but he’s also much more patient than I am. The one thing we still occasionally disagree about is what constitutes a science. My first degree was in psychology, and we used to have fun discussions about why the social sciences are or are not ‘science.’</p>

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<p>Where I was, all freshman biology classes and/or organic chem. classes met 8 a.m. Saturday morning, including homecoming weeking. Attendance was taken, and football players weren’t exempted. </p>

<p>If you wanted to be a doctor, those were the breaks. (They got it rid of 65% of their premeds in the first year - many of whom would have made fine doctors, and then claimed a 95% med. school admission rate.)</p>

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<p>Saturday classes will kill a lot of people. The only way they can exclude people from the pemed program is to offer saturday classes.</p>