New Year's Blues
2009 was, on reflection, an imperfect year. I can't say I'm sad to see it go. But to the extent that New Year's signals an impending return to Princeton after a too-short break -- oh, what I wouldn't give to make this cruel decade last just a few days longer!And of course it REALLY doesn't help that all my high school classmates have, like, weeks before they go back to school. "Why is your break so short?" they'll ask me come New Year's Eve. I'll give the usual (wholly unsatisfying) response: longstanding tradition, a late start to the school year in September, a faculty that would prefer not to grade final exams over their holiday break.But maybe a better question -- at the very least, a question posed today at Slate -- is this one: Why is everyone else's break so long? Do all those other schools really love their students so much more? Nope!Reports Noreen Malone:
[The other schools] also once hewed to a standard two-week break around Christmas, with exams scheduled for after the holiday. But in the 1970s, when many academic institutions found themselves in dire fiscal straits (one national task force predicted that more than one-quarter might be forced to close their doors), administrators realized that if they altered the calendar, they could reduce spending. By starting the term during late summer and by shutting their doors for a month or more over the winter holidays, they saved significantly on heating costs at a time when oil prices where cripplingly high.
If only Princeton had been a little poorer in the Seventies...PS: Happy New Year's! Have fun, be safe.