Because of COVID-19, instead of having a spring break this semester, Winthrop University has given its students wellness days. This announcement was made in an email from university president George Hynd on Dec. 14, 2020.
In that email, Hynd said, “While we had sincerely hoped to preserve a weeklong spring break in March, it is not in the community’s best interest to have a week off from classes in the middle of the semester. Our second adjustment then will be to forego the traditional spring break, and in doing so, reduce increased virus transmission that we have seen goes hand in hand with travel and tourism activities.”
The replacement wellness days have their fair share of pros and cons.
On the one hand, it is nice to have a day off in the middle of the week every once in a while. It’s nice to have that small break in the middle of a stressful week. However, most professors still assign work that is due on or immediately after these wellness days. So, in reality, this break is seen to some as a day without classes but still with the work.
Nekoda Moses, a freshman theatre performance major, said, “I think that we should’ve had an actual spring break. I don’t hate the wellness days outright, but I feel like we’ve been robbed of an actual mental health break.”
“A whole actual break would’ve been much more relaxing to just chill out and not have to worry, but the wellness days aren’t too terrible,” said Andy Jones, a freshman sociology major. “Though the wellness days kind of don’t work because we have classes the next day, and so we’d be spending our entire ‘break day’ working.”
Kerry Gareau, freshman musical theatre and political science major, said, “I feel like the wellness days should’ve been only on Mondays and Fridays because having them in the middle of the week for a lot of people throws off the entire week.”
“These wellness days interrupt the instruction week and are not sufficient breaks when considering the amount of asynchronous classes that ask for a week’s worth of work to be completed,” said Owen Smith, a freshman music major.
Freshman musical theatre major Adrienne Prupis said, “The wellness days usually end up making many students even more stressed because they spend the whole day either doing classwork that’s due the next day or worrying about classwork that’s due the next day, which is definitely not a mental break.”
“I understand why they didn’t want to give us a break off during COVID-19, but I feel that instead of just random days off, they could have set a week where classes could only give minimum homework so that the students weren’t just using the wellness days as a day to just do work and they could actually have time to relax,” said James Goodman, a freshman musical theatre major.
Every decision can’t please everyone. Some students enjoy the wellness days, and some do not.
It seems that the majority does not enjoy them because the wellness days don’t feel like an actual break. Hopefully, this time next year, COVID-19 will have come to an end in order for us to have a spring break.
