“You’re home already?” “Weren’t you just here?” “Don’t you study, ever!?”
These are things I often hear when coming home from school every break. Of the many things Yale offers to be thankful for — the dining halls, the libraries, the research opportunities — one of my favorite things about Yale is the amount of time the institution offers to be AWAY from it.
Upon comparing notes with friends, it has become clear how gracious Yale’s calendar is with its break time. So here is a blog post dedicated solely to relishing in this fact.
Me raving about another calendar year to my acquaintances.
Let me start with our summer break. Depending on whether or not your classes have final papers or in-person exams, you can technically be free as a bird by April 26th. This is when “reading period,” or a week of no classes dedicated to studying before finals, starts. But in the event you have no finals or only one, you can really take this time to slow down and maybe even start your summer early. Even if you DO have finals, the latest you’ll have to be at school (in 2024 at least) is May 8th. As a result, you basically have four months of summer vacation, as classes don’t start again until around September 1st.
Me the second the clock strikes Reading Period.
On top of this, Yale doesn’t seem to let its extended summer vacation cut into other breaks. Whereas many other schools offer two to three weeks of winter break, we receive roughly four weeks (or five weeks, depending on finals!), and we also get a full two weeks of spring break. This allows ample time for decompressing.
Vaguely, what decompressing can look like.
And don’t even get me started on October recess. Freshman year, this was one of the most shockingly spectacular things I found out about Yale as it was happening. Usually during the third week of October, we receive an “extended weekend” after classes end on Tuesday; Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of that week, classes don’t meet. So, essentially, students have a week in the middle of October – a month before our next week off around Thanksgiving — to do whatever we want!
How it felt to “discover” October recess.
During October recess, some students stay in New Haven to relax or get ahead on work, some take it as an opportunity to book a vacation or go on retreat with one of their extracurricular clubs. The past three years, I’ve gone on retreat, or a little bonding getaway, with my comedy group the Fifth Humour for two of the nights of the recess. The other nights I then stayed with friends in New York City, and I got to be a proper tourist for a bit before returning to class on Monday.
A photo from the Fifth Humour’s retreat in Pennsylvania circa 2021.
It’s worth acknowledging that I am praising Yale’s calendar from the perspective of someone who loves general swaths of free time to do nothing, and also that I don’t participate in many annual religious or cultural events. So of course, I’m sure many students would challenge me in claiming Yale’s calendar is oh-so-amazing. But it’s hard for me to complain when I’m usually the first one home and the last to leave.
