Why is work assigned over Spring Break when nothing ever gets done?

The reason that professors feel it necessary to apply normal workloads over spring break can be summed up in two words: bold optimism. Professors want to feel like they're challenging their students and somewhere along the line teaching them something. One of those lessons is hard work. A belief in this society is that hard work is a value that everyone must strive for, but it's hard work in a very specific context: Hard work towards earning your pay check, hard work towards earning your degree, and hard work towards earning your family and friends' respect. Universities are expected to instill this belief (and several others) and the mode of instillation is professors. When spring break approaches, professors begin watching the clock and shoving more into each lecture to make it across the finish line in the time allotted. To them a week off is a week full of free time that their students have to fill with their assigned work.

The belief is that learning doesn't stop just because classes aren't in session. This belief in the context of spring break is somewhat ironic though as in other cases it's often assumed that learning can't happen outside of said classrooms. If a student decides to not go to college then it's assumed that they don't want to learn and they don't want opportunities. Obviously, it's possible for these students to learn all kinds of things, arguably just as much as college students. However, college students are in a sense held to a higher standard, so spring break rolls around and professors build up that optimistic energy and toss essays, reading assignments, and other work at their students for the nine days of relative freedom. Perhaps they think that students are working diligently each day in their respective spring break locals to pump out quality work or perhaps they think that the Sunday evening before classes resume is a crunch time for most everyone. Either way, professors boldly set their due dates for the week of return and jump, as they should, right back into the material.

Another reason for professors to assign work over spring break is continuity. Professors don't want the stream of consciousness that was flowing through the rest of the semester to suddenly cut off just because classes don't meet for a week. They don't want to walk into class Monday morning and be met with blank faces when they ask, "So who remembers where we left off?" The idea is to assign work to students that will keep topics fresh and keep the academic gears churning. Then, Monday morning will bring with it bright-eyed and bushy-tailed students ready to spew out the knowledge they garnered during the week of academic vacation much like a father bringing his blackberry on holiday so that he can keep up with the important world of economics and be up to date upon his return to the corner office. This is another example of bold optimism. Certainly many students will spend a night here and there pumping out answers to statistics problems and the like, but still some will be sitting in their dorm rooms Sunday trying to remember why the word phagocytosis feels really important before that Bio quiz on Tuesday.

All in all, professors have the best intentions when creating assignments for spring break. There's certainly nothing wrong with continued academic achievement outside of the classroom. It's important for students to understand that they can learn during the semester as well as during breaks when they usually sit drooling in front of LCD screens or flying to some far flung nation for pure enjoyment. Also, it's important for students to not have too much of a break between exams because those brain cells won't last forever and only so many months can pass before the reproductive cycles of cellular slime molds fade out of memory. The solution is assignments over spring break. When creating these assignments professors are sometimes rather bold with the amount of work they want to give and as with anything there's a certain level of optimism inherent in the request. Ultimately, it's up to the student to show his or her stars when they return on Monday morning, regardless of which day they completed their editorial. Assigned work over spring break is an understandable phenomenon of higher education. Learning doesn't stop when the campus closes and hard work is expected of everyone everyday just like a fancy slogan on a soviet propaganda poster. Professors can have all of the bold optimism they want, because either way their students will pass through the halls once again handing in the gems of their academic achievement hoping to in turn be handed a degree at the end of these four long years.