Noah Jabusch
To first-years and upperclassmen alike, it’s a familiar pattern: rumors spread of bad weather incoming, students fantasize about an extra week’s vacation and after a day or two of canceled classes, everyone must struggle to regain their footing as the syllabus presses us ruthlessly onward.
To some extent, disruption from bad weather is inevitable. But while Hurricane Florence was something of an anomaly (although increasingly less so due to shifts in climate), Raleigh reliably gets at least some snow every winter. Likewise, North Carolina is reliably incapable of clearing all the roads without aid from the sun, forcing school systems and universities to close as they did in December.
So if we can pretty reasonably expect to lose a few days of class each spring semester, it seems counterproductive for professors to continue to plan out activities for every day of class. Nowhere in the syllabus policy does it mandate that professors schedule content for every day of class. To the contrary, it gives professors a great deal of freedom to plan as they see fit.
The source of the problem may in fact be designing a syllabus with such specificity in the first place. A study in organizational behavior and human decision processes found that when people adopt a “future focus” by laying out concrete plans for their future tasks, their predictions for how much they can accomplish become more optimistic and less accurate.
As a result, one expects that built-in review days or intentionally longer-than-necessary timetables for certain sections are sufficient to cope with any weather delays, when in reality they might already be needed to fit all the content desired.
It’s probably too drastic a step to suggest throwing out the notion of a course schedule entirely — having deadlines enables both professors and students to track whether the class is falling behind and adjust to get back on schedule. However, it does suggest that keeping the syllabus somewhat less specific may help professors to rein in their planning optimism and imbue a healthy anxiety about keeping on track. It also indicates that professors should plan consistent with finishing a day or two early at the end of the semester, to help compensate for this implicit bias.
Although professors are the ones charged with keeping a syllabus, students also have a significant role in determining whether the course will meet its learning objectives. Students can and should keep track of the syllabus just as diligently as the professor, so they can raise concerns if the class falls behind.
It’s especially in our interest to do this, because review days for tests are often the first on the chopping block. These days are an important time for students to seek last-minute clarification on confusing topics, without having to schedule time to visit office hours, as well as just take a breather between learning large chunks of content.
The main issue with waiting until disaster strikes to try to cope is that any classes prior to the event are already set in stone. It’s not possible to retroactively spend one less day on Chapter 1, but professors can always leave extra days available in the full 15 weeks, which are much less damaging to students when taken away.
It is always possible for Raleigh to dodge the icy bullet all semester, but in that case, classes would have an extra review day right before finals, or the capacity to extend the time spent on content in April, when the chance of snow is greatly reduced and everyone is starting to check out for the summer.
The choice between planning ahead or crossing our fingers seems clear, but to implement it successfully, students and professors will have to address personal biases, accept more realistic goals and work together to stay on target. With luck, the next snowpocalypse or hurricane will be a breeze.