Day(s) of the Dead

If Davis were to add a "dead day" or even "dead week" to its calendar, something similar would be likely to come to UCLA. The problem is that extending each term means extending the effective fall-winter-spring academic year. Would students really want such an extension which would cut into summer? Note that Berkeley is on a semester system which means it has one less term (and break between terms) than campuses on the quarter system. But read on from the Aggie:

Two UC Davis students are hoping to implement a dead week or “dead day” into the academic calendar. Alexandria Moncada, a recent graduate in political science-political service and history and a board member of the Chancellor’s Undergraduate Advisory Board (CUAB), along with Zara Shaikh, a recent graduate in psychology and communication and the student resource representative of Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian Student Group (MENASA) for CUAB hope to bring about this change for the future of UC Davis.

“Dead week/day is traditionally a week or day set apart from the final day of instruction, and before final examination, where there’s no academic obligation for students to complete assignments or attend classes,” Moncada said. “It’s beyond the normal class meeting, and this time is dedicated for students to either review their class work, retain information or, if anything, [practice] self-care time because we all need that before finals. I think that we neglect ourselves so much before finals begin because you’re going from Week 10 straight into finals week, and there’s no time for you to adjust to anything.”

Despite the popularity of the terms dead week or dead day, Moncada said that they are not ones she likes because of their insensitivity to the fact that suicide rates spike during finals week. “A lot of students deal with a lot of suicidal ideation during finals week because it’s a lot of pressure,” Moncada said. “You don’t know whether you’re going to pass your class or not, and, like, you can’t afford that. You can’t afford to have a dip in your GPA because you’re planning on going to grad school or professional school, or you’re trying to find a job.” Shaikh furthers that the pressure of wanting to succeed during finals has not been easy.

“It was so tough for me to just keep going, especially after weeks two and three,” Shaikh said. “It was just midterms after midterms or papers and assignments and all. It was just really hard to take some time for yourself to, you know, slow down and understand and learn the material as opposed to just, you know, memorize it for exams and then be done with it.” Shaikh said that their research was heavily involved in how other UCs’ academic calendars followed dead day/week. Shaik said Moncada focused greatly on Santa Barbara’s current approach to dead week to see the best way to implement it into UC Davis’ academic calendar. With this research, they both proposed an initiative that best aligned with UC Davis’ academic calendar...

Full story at https://theaggie.org/2023/08/24/uc-davis-to-potentially-implement-a-dead-week/.