Ahh, fall break. The time off we’ve been yearning for since the first mention of midterms. It’s when many shut their books for a bit and, for freshmen, the chance to shower without flip flops or get a meal from somewhere other than Marketplace. But it’s Thursday and fall break is over. It’s back to the daily grind.
Fall Break, like many things Duke promises you, has the ability to make you feel like it’s all going to be okay. You will have time to relax and return to Duke refreshed. Except maybe saying fall break was from Friday to Wednesday was a bit deceiving, since it doesn’t start until Friday night and it ends Wednesday morning. And can you really relax when your professor makes your assignment due the Wednesday morning we return? As much as I love having time off, I have to question if fall break is really that constructive at all.
The four true days we have off begin Saturday and end on a Tuesday. For those of us without a car or the ability to buy a ticket for a four day stay, the only way to get home is to have our parents/guardians pick us up. If you want to get the most out of your stay, you should probably leave Friday. This means your parents either have to drive over after work or take the day off. You probably won’t do too much Friday night unless you live close and leave early and so maybe you’ll decide to leave Saturday morning. So four full days quickly turn into three and a half. Now also consider how you’ll get home. Tuesday isn’t a holiday and so either you’ll come back on Columbus Day or your parents will once again have to take off work.
Seems a bit complicated, right? So freshmen year when I stayed at Duke for fall break, I didn’t feel too bad since I knew it would be more of a burden than it was worth to be home for two or three days. But the fall break burden reared its ugly head in a different way. The Gothic Wonderland that I had learned to love within the short span of two months shut me out. Everything closed and all the freshmen scrambled to the "Place Under Marketplace" to stock up on snacks and decided it was finally time to venture off campus to really eat in Durham (read: Ninth Street.)
Staying at school for a weekend and two days felt like being abandoned while all your friends went on to bigger and better things without you. The buses hardly ran and the University encouraged multiple trips to the vending machine or meals spent with real money that you ate by yourself or the only other two people on your hall who you had conversed with in the bathroom once or twice before. Everything at Duke reinforced the idea that I needed to leave. So why wasn’t the University making it easier for me?
Maybe fall break could start in the middle of the week. That way my parents could justify the stay at home by taking off Wednesday and bringing me back on Sunday. Or professors would understand that fall break isn’t an extended period to do assignments, but rather a period to catch up and/or get ahead. Duke wanted me to go, but it was making it so impossible to leave. But this year when a friend asked me to go home with them, I jumped at the idea of finally having a real fall break.
I went with a friend to the big bad city of Washington D.C., known to her as home. I was finally going to get away from Duke during break. I wouldn’t be isolated and scourging for food. I would be in a nice city and I would enjoy myself. In actuality, we just did a lot of napping.
I hadn’t realized just how exhausted I was, and sleeping in a real bed made it that much more apparent that sleep and I were in an estranged relationship. When I felt energized enough to actually do something for the day, I, like every other motivated Duke student, pulled out some work and proceeded to leave it on my lap while I watched Duke beat Georgia Tech. Fall break was a time for resting and actually having a break and so work was something I tried not to be concerned with, but with two deadlines looming in the near future, it was hard to put it out of my head.
So now I’m back at Duke and I feel conflicted. Stay at Duke and really get to know the Gothic part of the Wonderland or leave and feel concerned about all the work (you thought) you left at Duke. Is fall break really for us students, or is it rather the University’s saving grace when we (inevitably) complain about how much work we have and how busy we are. This just in Duke—we are busy and stressed and five (two) days just aren't cutting it when it really comes to a break. Sleeping in and spending time with your parents are what breaks should really be about. They should be a time when you can finally get some perspective and realize that you will make it through this semester. Or at the very least, they should be a time to watch a 13-episode season of a show that’s been cancelled and not feel one ounce of guilt about it.
I’m not one to complain, but when it comes to fall break, I’m asking for Duke to please give us the real thing. Let us remember what it feels like to rest and have conversations with friends and families. Until then though, let’s just say when it comes to the relationship I have with the four day October weekend—we’re on a break.
Brianna Whitfield is a Trinity junior. Her column runs every other Thursday.
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