In defense of: Reading period

Face it: Princeton students are the luckiest. Ever. Why? Not because of our stellar faculty, or our gorgeous campus or even our enormous endowment, but because of our reading period.

First off, reading period is incredibly long. We have that week of chill language classes, then roughly two full weeks for finals. It’s absurd. To be perfectly honest, nobody needs or takes that long to study for their finals. I mean, sure, we’ve got grade deflation, but even a particularly studious bum can get by without ever going to class. Of course, I would never condone slacking all semester in class only to make up for it by studying constantly with intravenous coffee consumption all reading period ... but it’s definitely possible. Other schools are not as fortunate in having such opportunities.

Take, for example, the alcoholic factory: Dartmouth, or douchey thespian capital: Yale. Each school’s students must suffer through study periods of only three short days before their finals. That’s right, I know it’s a tough idea for our pampered Orange-Bubble minds to wrap around, but some kids have to actually (re)learn all that material in 72 awful hours. At first, this prompted me to consider that academic life at other schools is tougher. But then I realized that it simply explains why everywhere else is inferior to Princeton.

So, you get that our breaks are a lot longer than everyone else’s. So what? Our classes are harder. Right? Well, we get study breaks too. Yup, I’m about to blow your mind with another inconceivable idea. Other schools don’t have the constant barrage of free food that we do. How do they eat then? When do they socialize? Where do they get their bubble tea? I simply don’t know, but I’m considering it as a senior thesis topic. I might even start a nonprofit organization afterwards. These corrupt institutions in Cambridge and Palo Alto are depriving their students of basic rights. The poor students don’t know what they’re missing.

My favorite part about reading period, though, is that lovely lull in which you don’t have much to do. Maybe you get the first few days after Dean’s Date off before you need to actually start studying for those last few silly finals. The luckiest of us, however, get early finals and then a week to be drunken sloths before we’re kicked out of the dorms for the summer. Most of us will, inevitably, sleep it away in hibernation before the exhausting summer of debauchery, internships or mind-numbing language immersion in the world’s pollution capital (Shout out to Princeton in Beijing!)

Others will likely spend reading period’s downtime in a drunken stupor, wasting away in an eating club, in a personal limbo of immorality and unconsciousness. I would stress, however, that you try to spend some of it awake and sober. This campus, especially in the late spring, is a lot like a sophisticated summer camp. Spend some time basking on Alexander Beach, or strolling down Nassau Street or eating on that awkward patio up the stairs from Whitman’s dining hall. Just ignore your work for once, and learn to cherish these years in which you’ll live with the most brilliant and beautiful people in the world. Princeton’s reading period is the perfect opportunity to remind us of how blessed we are.