Like so many Amherst students, I am all too familiar with 4 a.m. The kind of 4 a.m. where you’re hunched over a desk, accompanied only by your notes and a mug of lukewarm coffee. You’ve stared at a computer so long you can’t tell what the words you wrote just a few hours ago even mean. You’ve refreshed Facebook for the 80th time. I’ve been at Amherst for three months, and I’ve already had my share of those nights. Upperclassmen assure me it gets worse.
So, on Monday, Oct. 6, the morning after I’d stayed up late completing a take-home exam for Spanish and had woken up early to practice bass, I was irritated to check my email and have Dean of New Students Rick López ask me and the rest of my class, “Are you putting in enough time?” I was more frustrated when, according to this email, I was not. Dean López says that students should be completing an average of 10 hours of outside work per week for every course. So, for a standard course load, 40 hours a week of homework.
That means six hours of homework a day, provided I take something of a Sabbath and only complete four on Saturday. That’s a ludicrous amount of time, especially for Amherst, a liberal arts college, which preaches balancing schoolwork with unstructured learning. But, whatever, Amherst is all about rebranding its image. I’m a new student in a new class; if the message Amherst wants to send to us is that we’ll work to the point of exhaustion, fine. We’ll be scholars, alone in our rooms, sipping Earl Grey tea and poring over leather copies of Søren Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling.” When we’re up at 4 a.m., meticulously crafting essays on Danish philosophy, we’ll appreciate it, damn it, because that’s what a college education is about.
Fast forward two weeks. It was Monday, Oct. 20. This time, I was not surprised to check my email and see Dean López tell the class of 2018 to complete four to eight hours of homework each day. But I was frustrated to, in addition to that, be told to exercise every day. I was even more frustrated to be told I should be getting at least eight hours of sleep per night.
Let me put that in perspective. I’m in class or at my job an average of five hours a day, not atypical among Amherst first-years. Six hours of homework, one hour of exercise and eight hours of sleep puts me at 20. Give me an hour to shower and get ready for the day, an hour break from my 6 of studying, a half hour for breakfast, a half hour for lunch, an hour for dinner… and, look, I’m out of time. There’s my day.
If Amherst expects its students to lead balanced, healthy, fulfilling lives, this schedule just is not possible. If it preaches 40 hours of homework a week, there is no way it can expect us to be well rested. It’s one thing to assign a massive amount of work; it’s another to deny its impact.
When students are doing 40 hours of homework and sleeping 56 hours every week, there is no time left for anything non-academic. I wouldn’t be able take an extra long shower or call my mom, let alone take advantage of on-campus activities or pursue my non-classroom interests. I should feel guilty for writing this article because it took up time I should have spent studying.
With the schedule Dean López lays out, I can’t spend time chatting in the common room. I shouldn’t even learn the names of my floormates. Attending speeches or campus events would be rare. Joining clubs would be irresponsible. Playing on a varsity team would be impossible. Walks into town? Strolls through the Mead? Chats over coffee? Out of the question. An hour on Netflix means I’ve failed as a student.
If this is the schedule Amherst students are supposed to maintain, why did Amherst build the Powerhouse? Why does it bring in speakers and musicians? Why does it fund extracurriculars? Dean López’s emails contradict what the administration has preached in its brochures, its tours, its welcome speeches. They also contradict everything we’ve learned about leading a healthy lifestyle.
There are not enough hours in the day to live up to the administration’s expectations. If Amherst expects a full workweek’s worth of homework, it needs to acknowledge the sacrifices that come with it. The first is sleep, because as students, our lives involve so much more than just schoolwork.
College to me, and I’m sure most students, meant becoming engaged in an environment. I was excited to take classes, yes, but also to, you know, meet people, make friends and have conversations about things other than school. The implication of these emails is that a social life is unnecessary.
Amherst students, by virtue of being human, cannot be expected to follow Dean López’s schedule and lead meaningful lives. These messages blatantly contradict the effort the school has put into building a community and funding activities. And they are extremely insulting to us as students as they deny the toll a heavy workload takes on one’s sleep schedules and imply that nothing should matter to us but schoolwork.
Just when I thought Amherst kids couldn't find another thing to complain about, someone has proved me wrong. People at this school just need to grow some balls...seriously. I think kids get whinier by the year
No one really spends 6 hours per day on school work to be quite honest...
if you can't take the heat, get out the kitchen.
"Six hours of homework, one hour of exercise and eight hours of sleep puts me at 20." Hum...
Hmmm... In my experience, I always made sure to take some lighter classes to balance my schedule. I don't know any other solution than to choose classes and check Amherst Scrutiny to get an accurate impression of the workload. I hope things improve for you and any other student that feels overwhelmed. Also, don't take advice of any dean, ever. lol
The key word here is "contradict." Merely thinking about what it would take to meet the administration's expected levels of devotion to schoolwork, social life, and health requires the entertainment of all sorts of warped realities. (Word up for having the courage to think about this non-real space.)
¶
The Reality requires that you choose. You can't have all three. And yet Dean López & Co. can't let themselves believe this. They, like most generically good people, want to do The Right Thing. That is, they want to think they are doing The Right Thing. What they don't do is pay careful attention to the disjunction between what they want to believe and what they should believe based on like, empiricism.
¶
The result of this disjunction is, as you noted, a fundamentally schizophrenic behavioral philosophy. On this point, I would suggest a slight recalibration of your closing thought. The administration does not say we should privilege schoolwork over not-schoolwork. They still put on events, and they still stress "keeping balance" and wax romantic to parents about students' "val conversations." They stress the importance of schoolwork and non-schoolwork equally. And that's the problem. They don't acknowledge that the expected levels of participation in both are simply impossible to maintain. Don't give them credit for a coherency they don't deserve.
¶
I, like you, would appreciate it if the administration would stop playing Pangloss and actually help students and professors work out solutions for how to deal with a fundamentally insane situation. How about making it common practice in reading/writing intensive classes to note on the syllabus what sections of the readings are most relevant? And for quantitative classes, what about marking the problems that are most germane to key concepts? Just two (admittedly flawed) thoughts. But they are sort of solutionny. Until we stop embracing disjunctivism over empiricism (de groso modo, until we stop telling ourselves what we see and start figuring that out by, like, looking) we're never gonna get any solutions to what seems to be a real problem of balance. We're just gonna get more idyllic incantations that make the administrators feel good about themselves. (Which, I think may be marginally worthwhile. Also, note: I'm not convinced that we really have a work/life/health balance that is particular to Amherst per se. Pretty sure this could just be part of the universal petty-bourgeois human condition. What's certain, though, is that López and Co. won't be caught dead publicly admitting this truth. And that leaves something to be wanted, fo sho.)
My sentiments exaclty
This has to be one of the most exaggerated articles I have had the misfortune to read. Don't take the advice if you don't want to. I'm sure you're competent enough to choose the advice you should follow. And don't mope about work because there's so many people in the college who have a lot more to do.
This article is so important. The points you made are excellent. The ridiculous amount of homework and the idea that you should feel guilty for not spending all the time you have doing homework are very real, and I'm happy you addressed them. There are just not enough hours in a day to assign the eight hours of homework a night, and to do so is a crime. Thank you for this.
I just read the well-argued opinion essay by your classmate Madeline Ruoff’18, published in The Amherst Student. She compellingly argues that I need to adjust the advice I am offering members of the great class of 2018. I invite anyone who is interested in discussing it to come see me, or even to stop me to chat if you see me walking across campus. If there is enough interest in such a discussion, perhaps we can reserve a table in Valentine for a larger conversation. My goal in my Semi-Weeklyy Messages is to offer you advice that helps you thrive here at Amherst College. This is a two-way street in which the College supports each of you so that you can challenge yourself and grow intellectually and socially, and in which you, in turn, help change the culture and intellectual life of the College. I look forward to continuing the conversation.
Dean López
Link exchange is nothing else except it is just placing the other person's webpage link on your page at appropriate place and other person will also do
same for you.
My weblog; Test Bank Mathematics