When I have to write a paper, I like having as much time as possible. However, last semester, when my professor asked the class if we wanted our final paper to be due before winter break or on Dean’s Date, we chose the earlier deadline.
Professors should set earlier deadlines for their final projects. The stress before Dean’s Date occurs largely because many of us have several projects to work on at once. Dean's Date is so stressful that I chose to have less time to write my paper than to have another assignment due on Dean’s Date. If the deadlines for those projects were staggered throughout the final month of the semester, we could avoid unnecessary Dean’s Date stress.
For the most recent Dean’s Date, I had two large problem sets and a short report, which is not a large workload, considering that some of my friends had multiple papers to write. I started working on the assignments during the last week of winter break, but the week before the deadline, I was stressed nevertheless. Each assignment would soon be due, so each one demanded my attention. At any given moment, I worried about the two or three assignments I wasn’t working on. If I had only started sooner, I could have focused on each assignment, one at a time.
Students have one-and-a-half weeks during reading period to work on Dean’s Date assignments. We can also request extensions, and we have all of winter break to work as well. So with proper planning, we can spread out our workload, and all but the busiest students can avoid being stressed on Dean’s Date.
But this does not happen in practice. It is unreasonable to expect students to work through all of winter break because break is meant to give us respite from our schoolwork. Furthermore, many of us celebrate holidays over break. In my family, we reserve the week between Christmas and New Year’s for spending time with each other. Professors are not always willing to grant extensions past Dean’s Date, and there are extra bureaucratic hurdles to requesting them. It’s also hard to find motivation to work on a project when the deadline is far off (although that doesn’t excuse us when we procrastinate).
Regardless of who is to blame for our stress the week before Dean’s Date, professors and University administration can reduce it. Professors can stagger the due dates of their final projects, like my professor did, so that most students do not have several deadlines close together.
To coordinate deadlines among professors, the administration needs to set guidelines. For example, all problem sets and lab reports could be due before winter break; all short papers could be due a week before Dean’s Date; and only longer papers could be due on Dean’s Date. This way, students would have a week to focus on just their largest assignments. Before the three deadlines, students would become busier and more stressed, but not as stressed as they are under the current system.
Deadlines will never be stress-free, but when Dean’s Date approaches, it need not loom so large.
Bhaskar Roberts is a sophomore from Buffalo, NY. He can be reached at bhaskarr@princeton.edu.
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