Spring break at Kwantlen: No miami beach?

By Brittany Tiplady

Well, it’s the third week back from the luxurious Olympic “reading break,” and I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m still hung over.

Actually, I do know that nearly every Kwantlen student feels the same. Classes are plagued with groggy, bleary eyed, unmotivated students that can barely wrap their heads around the concept of coming to school, let alone mid-terms and looming finals.

Sure those two weeks off were 14 days of alcoholic, Olympic crazed, party central bliss, but in the end, was it really worth it?

Let’s be honest, no one actually “read” anything, and the fact that Kwantlen excused the break as such is what I find the most obscene.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining about having the time off, I feel it was just the circumstance of the Vancouver 2010 once-in-a-lifetime Olympic games that being held in lieu of the break, set my motivation back to the speed of a snail. Coming up to the point of the “reading break,” I could feel my fellow students and I yearning for timeoff, and so in the long run, I don’t think a two-week extended reading break is an atrocious idea.

Considering another Olympics in Vancouver may not be seen in my life again, I don’t think a “reading” break of the same length at Kwantlen each year will be of any disservice to students. Because it wasn’t the break itself that caused my permanent hangover, but the up until 4 A.M., partying with foreigners in the streets for two solid weeks that did me, and everyone else in.

University is no stroll in the garden, and a two week reading break next year, hell, even a week-long reading break, I think would be rather therapeutic for Kwantlen’s hard working student body. Looking around, and all I see is my classmates chugging Red Bull still reminiscing about Olympic festivities, and mumbling a countdown until summer.

I can barely stomach the sight of a simple assignment.

So if Kwantlen offers an extended “reading” break next spring, I’m thinking I’ll actually crack open my textbook.