YES
Like a number of my contemporaries, I’m currently ill. Like a number of my contemporaries, I’m currently behind on work. Never mind, most students around the country would say, just take a few days off, get better and then catch up. Not so at Oxford.
The term begins in a whirl of extraordinary excitement, and for a few brief moments you’re too happy about being back in Oxford to worry about work. You think of all the things you are going to do this term. Then your deadlines hit you like a simile you’d be able to think of if you had any time left in the day. The next eight weeks consist of essay crisis after essay crisis, without even the promise of sleep as a respite since you have to head to Bridge once you’ve sent this off.
And sure, one might argue that after eight weeks of this madness, you’ll need a rest. But this kind of stop-start, all-go then all-stop is a disastrous one. It’s not how the world works outside Oxford, and it’s not a healthy way to conduct one’s life.
In a recent survey of students conducted by Times Higher Education, Oxford placed bottom for ‘fair workload’, a clear indicator that the students at this university are not happy with the structure of the term. The love for their subject which most Oxford students brought here is carefully and systematically eroded by a rigorous programme designed to turn a labour of love into an onerous chore. It is difficult to feel passionate about the poetry of Catullus when you’ve had to stay up all night throwing together an essay with the semblance of a structure and a vaguely coherent argument.
This brings me on nicely to my next point. Why, when most students at other universities have exams throughout their degrees, do we insist (for the most part) on having only two exam periods, and only one that counts towards our final qualification?
An argument often used is that having all your exams at the end of your final year means that you must have a comprehensive understanding by the time you leave. It is not possible for students to spend a term cramming one module, do the exam and then forget it all.
This would be OK, if our teaching was actually geared towards gaining a comprehensive understanding of the subject. However, moving so swiftly between topics (for example, a student might ‘do’ Keats in a week and then move on), it is impossible to obtain a deeper knowledge of said topic until the vacation, by which time the average student will have forgotten whatever she wrote in a caffeine-addled haze at 2am on Thursday of 5th week and, more importantly, will be too tired to do any work anyway.
For many students, the hasty revision period for prelims often consists of actually learning the damn stuff for the first time. We need more time and more teaching to understand what we are learning, and we need an exam timetable that actually relates to the way in which we study.
NO
Summer in Oxford has an unquestionably idyllic image – punting and Pimm’s, croquet and cricket, to May Day and May Balls, and walking home through cobbled streets in the early morning light in ball gowns and dinner jackets. Yet the phrase ‘Trinity Term’ doesn’t always invoke such Waugh-esque nostalgia. Unfortunately for most, it is also ‘exam term’, bringing endless revision in stuffy libraries as the sun shines outside.
This isn’t the only indication that Oxford’s academic calendar might not be the most beneficial to its students. Oxford and Cambridge follow their own traditional academic format with three terms comprising eight weeks each. This format is notable – many universities in the United States and Canada follow a semester-based calendar, with two academic sessions of around 15 weeks. Much of Europe also follows the semester system, as do several high-profile UK universities. Even amongst universities following the three term model, most institutions operate in terms of ten weeks or more.
But would Oxford be better off reorganising its academic year? I don’t think so. If the structure of three eight-week terms remained only for tradition, I would argue against its preservation. However, I genuinely believe that the format is the best for students here.
Yes, eight weeks is short and, combined with the added intensity of an Oxford degree, this makes our workload per week consistently higher than many other universities. Yes, the amount of work is stressful and, if you do any extracurricular activities at all, you are going to end up tired (at the end of last term I slept for 17 hours straight, which is a personal record). It is also the best preparation for working life, which is ruled by strict deadlines, fast turnover of projects and working hard five days a week, every horrible week, until you are a husk.
One essay every fortnight isn’t preparation for the daily grind, but desperately trying to make a deadline when you are still literally brined in gin from the night before just might be. If nothing else, the structure of our academic calendar makes it an exercise in getting shit done.
Fortunately, unlike in the real world, our workload also allows us impressively long holidays. I strongly believe that there is more work-life balance to be found in periods of truly hard work punctuated by significant periods in which to relax and pursue purely non academic pursuits than in the drudgery of a 15 week semester with a lighter workload.
This argument can also be extended into keeping exams in the summer term. All academic calendars are designed logically so that the longest recess falls over the summer months. Whilst some courses do have exams that fall in January or February, the movement of all yearly exams to this period would either require the movement of the academic year or an increase in the need to revise at least some course material over the summer months. Our current system is the one that allows the largest portion of summer to be enjoyed most fully, even if it requires some sacrifices in Trinity Term.