March 2024 was great for SLU students. Only having about two weeks of classes allowed students to get as much rest as they possibly could after a brutal winter and long midterms week. They got to take time at home with their families, travel the world, and go out and see the nightlife in St. Louis. College students frequently feel the crushing weight of fatigue, pressure, and overall stress and anxiety on their shoulders, so having this extra time off in March gave them much-needed rest. This rest came at the expense of a relaxing April. Since the beginning of the semester, nearly every SLU student can agree that they have been dreading the imposing month of April – 30 full days without a single holiday in sight. There are 21 days in April when students will have class. That does not even include the days in May when students are expected to attend classes and prep for exams before sitting down for a week of torture as they check each final exam off of their to-do list. So, while March was a month for equal parts rest and partying, April will be a month for equal parts burnout and breakdowns.
Looking at the calendar, technically, it is not Saint Louis University’s fault: there are no holidays in April that warrant a long weekend or week-long break for its students. Typically, there are days off in each month of the semester for a holiday, and if the month does not have a day of celebration, SLU gives one mental health day a semester to help students feel less overwhelmed, especially during the months where there are no other days off for holidays or long weekends. Easter this year threw a wrench in that plan. Taking place at the end of March, Easter break ends on the first day of April, meaning April no longer has a reason to take a weekend off of school.
Now, Dr. Pestello does not decide when Easter is going to take place each year. However, the Provost does decide when mental health days will be given throughout the semester. It is possible for decision-makers to give students a random Monday or Friday free of classes to give them a much-needed break at the end of a difficult semester. This gift would not only help their mental health, but it would also prove that the provost and administration actually cares for the well-being of its students here at SLU. The whole point of the mental health days is to give students the opportunity to rest and be able to put homework on the back burner. They are a way for administrators to show the mental and physical well-being of SLU students is actually important and actually taken into consideration when creating the semester schedules. Instead of showing students they care, though, administrators are telling students through the lack of days off that they are expected to power through and risk mental stability for good grades and attendance.
Many SLU students are dreading the effects April will have on their mental health. Going an entire month without a break is a surefire way to increase burnout and cause stress and anxiety levels in students to skyrocket. The Well-Being Thesis covers this phenomenon of mental health declining because of a lack of time off to rest and recuperate. Having time off can help to “facilitate recovery, by returning your mental and psychical functional systems to their baseline,” which then helps stabilize one’s overall mood and even physical well-being (The Wellbeing Thesis 2024). April is already a tough month of the semester. The weather is getting warmer, making students’ focus revolve more around being outside as much as possible. Days with bright sun and warm temperatures make staying motivated on school work next to impossible. Many students use the break in April as a beacon of hope to make it through the stressful time of year.
This year, the beacon of light that takes the shape of a break is over a month away. SLU students are at risk of burning themselves out during the long stretch of April. Paola Contreras, a sophomore at SLU, is not happy with the long stretch of time between breaks.
“Going the entire month of April without a single break is going to do a lot of harm to most students. Having no days off the month before finals is going to lead to burnout,” Paola says, “That will eventually cause all of us to not have any energy to be able to do well on our finals. Having breaks more spread out allows students to have that “break” between exams and projects that allows us to have fuel for those dreaded finals.”
Administrators could have planned for this better as well. They could have given us a second mental health day during the spring semester in April to make up for the weird timing of Easter. If they did not want to have another entire day off of classes, the mental health day in February could have been moved to April. February was a short month and the day off was close enough to winter break that the time off was not necessarily needed at that moment. Plus, March had so few days actually in class that it was easy to look forward to the time off.
A freshman at SLU touches on the anxiety just the thought of going through the entirety of April without any breaks causes them.
“College is a tough transition as is. It’s really nice being able to tell myself ‘oh only a few more weeks or whatever until I get to go home for break’,” they say, “but now I have to go over a month before summer break. That’s just too long, I just know I’m going to have some form of breakdown and not be able to focus on my schoolwork at like the busiest time of the semester.”
SLU is already in slightly hot water for its lack of timeliness in the reconstruction of Qdoba and Subway, as well as the overall lack of support systems in place for its students. The least SLU could do is give one day off in April in an attempt to protect and recover the mental health of SLU students. Instead, SLU just continues unnecessary construction projects that give SLUdents headaches all day every day.
