Thanks a lot Princeton

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I used to think that the most annoying thing about Princeton was the school's disgustingly ugly orange band uniforms. However, I have reconsidered. Now the school's most annoying feature is its final exam schedule.

In purely academic terms first, it makes no sense that students finished classes on Dec. 16 but did not begin finals untill Jan. 18. Imagine having a final on Saturday (yes, they have Saturday finals) Jan. 28. That would be a full 43 days after your last day of class.

Even Harvard, which also has this illogical final exam schedule, doesn't have a break that long.

But from a basketball stance, Princeton's exam schedule is even worse because it's a hinderance to the other Ivy League schools -- especially Penn. Since Penn is Princeton's travel partner, the Quakers cannot play an Ivy League basketball game during Princeton's obnoxiously long break. This explains the 20 day break in Penn's League schedule.

This hurts Penn in many ways. First, it destroys any sort of momentum the team had after it's pair of blowouts in the Ivy League opening weekend against Columbia and Cornell. Also, it makes it almost impossible for the team to schedule games during this break. Every other team in the nation is in the middle of conference play. Penn's lucky that Lafayette, La Salle and St. Joe's were wiling to play this late in the season.

The rest of the League should pressure Princeton to move its exam period up a few days. There's no reason why the school waits until Jan. 9 to begin reading days and then waits until Jan. 18 to begin finals. Nine days of studying after three weeks of vacation?

If Princeton could start finals on, say, the 14th (the same day Harvard begins) then there could be Ivy League play for the entire league this coming weekend. That would just mean a few days less of an already too long vacation/reading days period.

P.S. Tannenwald, if you have to explain a joke, it's probably not that funny (see below).