In a rare reversal of power, universities feel swindled by students. With nothing more than their collective course-scheduling might, students have made three-day weekends the standard on college campuses across the nation. This Sunday’s New York Times story “How Thursday became the new Friday” confirms that students have usurped Friday, and university efforts to reclaim the day have been futile.
Pointing a voyeuristic lense at college life, the Times depicts students stacking their schedules in the middle of the week, and using their weekends as a three-day party-and-recovery cycle.
For students, this news is as stale as the beer in The Keg’s Thursday night “big cups.” However, this story is a reminder that we have more free time now than we ever will, yet we seem to be spending most of our down time recovering from the night before.
Admittedly, the well-rounded college experience goes beyond class time and study sessions. It also involves finely-tuned nocturnal body clocks that allow us to frequent seedy local bars by night and roll out of bed in a smoky cloud for class at noon. But surely in our coming-of-age bildungsroman the most important parts of our education happen outside this collegiate bubble, and for us at Northwestern, can be found beyond the purple line.
Take the most highly regarded example of out-of-classroom learning: “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” As Bueller and crew subvert their constricting high school class schedules, they use their day off to joy ride through Chicago, appreciate Monet at the Art Institute, dine in a new restaurant and guest star in a parade. While the same vibrant city is right in our backyard, we are lucky if we do in a quarter what they did in a day.
Over the past few weeks, I have argued that we students are not apathetic, we are not afraid of the real world and we are not lazy. Apparently we are just hung over. Too hung over to even do anything interesting with our leisure time.
Granted, from our vantage point on the Lakefill, the three-inch-tall Chicago skyline looks really far away. My junior year, it took an internship and an extracurricular activity to get me downtown regularly, especially on Fridays. Now, many of my most memorable college experiences did not take place at the same four places I go every week, but rather, involve a late-night trek from Soldier Field to River North, getting lost in Wicker Park, and my first venture down to the Loop.
Before the city freezes over for winter, and before university administrators figure out a way to drag us back to the classroom on Fridays, students should realize it is possible to nurse a hangover on the El and discover of one of the most culturally, aesthetically and historically rich cities in the country. Because life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop drinking once and a while you could miss it.
Amanda Junker is a Medill senior. She can be reached at [email protected].
