Sebastien Angel | A well-deserved break

The date was Jan. 9, 2006, right after the end of my first term at Penn. I'd just finished selling my books from the fall semester on eBay, but there was no time to spend all the money - it was already time for me to buy new ones.

That's because Penn brought its students back for classes early, like it normally did.

But when we go home for the holidays next year, we won't be coming back to Penn just as our friends get settled in at home.

No longer will we be subjected to our little mini-holiday break, which lets us out weeks after the Christmas tree goes up and calls us back to the dreary halls of the David Rittenhouse Laboratory only a few days after it goes back down again.

Take a look at the academic calendar. This year, the semester ends on Dec. 20 and class resume on Jan. 8; next year, it goes from Dec. 19 to Jan. 16. As a result, we lose a little more that a week of our summer vacation - this year, it starts May 4, and next year it'll begin May 13.

In the days leading up to the end of that first break, when I first told my friends that I was going to be back at Penn on a single-digit date in January, they laughed at the suggestion. And rightfully so - most of them won't go back until after Martin Luther King's birthday. For some of them, winter is practically over by the time they settle back in class.

In retrospect, I probably should have made up some excuse. I could have said there was a basketball game that I really wanted to see. Or that I couldn't find a flight and had to take one a week in advance. Or that I owed money to some higher-up in the Philly mafia.

All I could come up with was the truth: that I was saving my break time for the summer. But that was small consolation, and certainly not enough to avoid the deserved ridicule. No one will be around during that earliest week of the summer, since Penn students get those days and few other schools do. Meanwhile, everyone is going to be around during that last week of break, while our noses are pressed firmly to the grindstone.

Princeton leaves Dec. 15 and comes back Jan. 17. Harvard goes from the 19th to the 13th. Cornell lets out on the 15th and doesn't come back until the 22nd. Columbia's vacation is the 22nd to the 16th.

Brown gives its students well over a month, allowing them to come back on the 24th. As a result, Penn's spring 2007 drop deadline comes a full 12 days before the end of Brown's add window does.

That has a lot to do with the Brown registrar's looser restrictions, but it's also because our spring term starts a couple of days after New Year's. Brown students, by contrast, wait until the leaves come back on the trees in Providence before deciding to go back to school.

West Coast and international students finally have something on the Penn calendar to cheer about. The tease called Thanksgiving break (officially, four days) barely makes a long flight home worthwhile. It's not even worth unpacking your bags - by the time you actually get to your front door, you're leaving in a couple of days anyway.

At least next year they can have a good month for vacation, rather than having to settle for the 20 days that we're getting this year.

So while it might not be desirable to wait for baseball season to start the spring term, the extra week certainly makes sense. On behalf of the students who can't just take SEPTA to some hometown in New Jersey: thanks, Penn.

Now, let's see what you can do about that fall break.

Sebastien Angel is a College sophomore from Worcester, Mass. His e-mail address is angel@dailypennsylvanian.com. Overnight Celebrity appears on Wednesdays.

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