Imagine waking up on a weekday. Your alarm didn’t go off and the light is streaming through the window like it does around noon. Your stomach is growling because you spent the last twelve hours catching up on sleep you’ve missed throughout the semester and you’re dying to go eat the pancakes you know your mom made for you since she has missed you being home.

But then the panic sets in. You realize it’s Monday and you were supposed to go to class this morning. You’re back in your dorm room. How could you have possibly forgotten to set an alarm and go to class on a Monday morning?

Then it hits you. You left all of your friends and family back home who are still on their fall break from their colleges and universities and all you got was one lousy day. One.

Here at Ashland University we classify a break as a single Friday off. To be frank this isn’t a break but rather an extended weekend. Why don’t we get more time off? We’re college students who are still trying to figure out how to balance 18 credit hour semesters, find time to eat, and not get stomach ulcers from the stress of grades and deadlines.

Sure, we get a month off come December when the semester ends, but let’s face it, we just finished midterms. We’ve been up late studying, writing, crying and panicking. The least we could get is an extra couple of days to catch up on sleep and visit with our families and old friends.

Some colleges get a whole week off and here we are receiving a 24 hour “break.” Maybe this isn’t up to the university though. Perhaps they are forced to hold us captive here for a certain number of days. Google failed to inform me if that was the case though.

Luckily, we are fortunate enough to end the spring semester earlier than a lot of other surrounding institutions so maybe whoever is in charge of this likes to give us a longer summer break. But hear me out. I would rather have an extra two or three days now and go an extra two or three days in May than what we already have scheduled.

If we had extra days at the end of a semester, then maybe it would even help disperse our finals. I had a professor give his final a week before everyone else because he had a prior commitment.

An extra two or three days at the end of the semester would widen the possible window to give finals ultimately decreasing the stress and sleep deprivation of students. That sounds like a win-win to me.

But then again this is just my opinion and it won’t change anything on campus any time soon so I guess I’ll get back to studying, writing, crying and panicking for the rest of the week before our “break” and we can all hope for more days off in the future.