Whatever happened to dead week?
I mean, I know it’s still around, but where did it go?
For those of you who may be too new to college to know what dead week is, or is supposed to be, I’ll try to explain.
Dead week is literally the week before finals.
It’s supposed to be a week of nothing but studying for exams, preparing for those last big tests of the semester.
Essentially it’s supposed to be a kind of breather for students before the proverbial “poo” hits the fan. However, what it tends to be now is a week of quizzes, presentations, papers and a whole lot of no free time.
Instead of a week for reflection and book-hitting, it’s a week of mad typing and nerve-frazzling oral expositions.
Needless to say, dead week is anything but dead. It’s alive and kicking in the worst kind of way.
I personally have two papers and a research project/presentation due in those few days of what should be empty time. I know folks who have twice that much plus huge tests to prepare for.
It’s not fun, it’s not pretty, and darn it, it’s not fair.
Yeah, I know, no one said life was fair, but that doesn’t mean students should be expected to resort to Speed to finish everything.
I ask, do professors not remember being students?
I know to be teaching at ETSU you had to at least go to college and I’m sure studying is not a new concept. Neither is dead week, I imagine.
Dead week is a national pastime. Schools around the country have them, and the idea is the same. It’s been the same for years.
Heck, some schools don’t even have classes that week – talk about a breather.
I know that by leaving everything for the week before exams, procrastinators like me get an extra few days of doing nothing, but are those days worth it?
Personally, I say no. Instead of having assignments due over time, they all get lumped together, a million words of expository writing due within a week of one another.
Every teacher likes to believe their class is the most important, that all the time in the world can be spent on that subject.
But that’s just not the case.
With a full-time course load of at least 12 credits, students are taking anywhere from four to seven classes a semester, most with required reading, writing and a final exam. That’s a lot of crap to get done, especially if everything is due the same week we’re supposed to be studying.
Now, I admit, I know few students who, if given the opportunity, would actually use a week of nothing to study.
Most students at ETSU would spend the days lazily in bed – sick or hung over. Or at the very least, playing video games (you know who you are) and watching bad television (I know who I am). Most folks would simply wait until the night before the test to study, as if they hadn’t had an entire week to prepare.
But that’s not the point. The point is dead week is something students come to expect. It’s to be a week of slower-paced classes, longer spans of staring into space, more moments to comprehend that a semester of slacking is about to bite us in the butt.
We need that week to decompress. We need those five days to get ready for the big, bad scary Scantrons. We just need that week to not be like every other week. Week 15 should be sacred. It should be respected and honored and recognized.
Dead week should be ETSU’s most solemn occasion, a time for recollection of the semester past.
Sadly, it’s too late for this semester to properly celebrate the time that is the week before finals, but let’s not fear looking to the future.
So I say next semester, let’s reincarnate dead week.

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