New Schedule Causes School-Wide Frustration

Under last year’s Hybrid Model schedule, ten minutes of passing time was allotted between classes. While the change was made to help accommodate time for the new Covid protocols on campus, I found myself relying on the time for other purposes, whether that be to ask one of my teachers a question after class or to just take my time to pack my stuff. But with the switch back to five-minute passing periods, I find myself barely getting to classes on time, let alone having the time to do anything else. Especially walking from Baldwin to Thompson, I barely have time to take a breath and shift my focus before my next class. To some, the time change may seem insignificant, but 5 minutes can make all the difference. If one class gets out a few minutes late, I’ll be late to my next class, which can get my whole day off track. This is extremely stressful, given our tightly packed Hopkins schedules.

That’s not all. One of the biggest changes to the schedule is 65-minute classes. Before the pandemic, we had 55-minute blocks, with each block meeting seven times in the two-week rotation schedule. This then shifted to three times a week under the Hybrid Model, with classes still being 55 minutes long. But now we’re stuck with an in-between scenario, trying to preserve the three times a week class schedule by adding time to the classes themselves. Maybe this is a good idea in theory, but in reality, those extra ten minutes make classes nearly impossible to get through. Focusing for 65 minutes straight is tedious, and I often find myself staring at the clock watching the minutes go by. I have to push myself to stay engaged with the class and not zone out, which is difficult for those of us with short attention spans. Whether or not teachers are happy with the added time, it only makes things harder for me, as a student, to learn.

With the bulk of our time spent in class, we all expect to get a chance to take a step back and breathe during the day. That time is during the lunch waves; or, at least, that is the assumption. As a sophomore, I have the first lunch wave of the day. Most days I have a class in Malone before lunch. I should be able to get lunch pretty quickly, right? But alas, that is not the case. I find myself waiting in line for 20 minutes just to get lunch, with only a few minutes left to actually eat before I have to head off to Advisory. Now, several measures are being taken to lessen the amount of time we spend waiting in line. But despite all best efforts and good intentions, it simply isn’t enough. The problem isn’t just the time we spend waiting for lunch, it is the lack of time overall. What happened to lunch being a time to eat and catch up with friends? With our busy schedules, shouldn’t we get the chance to give our minds a rest after pushing ourselves so hard through a morning of classes? Some might say that we do have the time to relax in the form of the free time built into the lunch waves. The accommodated 30 minutes certainly seemed nice at first, but it doesn’t provide enough time for students to properly relax, do work, or even schedule meetings with teachers.

The new schedule was supposed to help us smoothly transition back to fast-paced life at Hopkins, but it just doesn’t take into account the things that matter to us or to the ways we learn best. The fact that such simple, yet important, details were overlooked is indicative of the larger issue at hand: an evident lack of communication between the administration and the student body. It is about time this changes.