NOV 7, 2024 | FEATURES | By Esa George, Features Section Editor
Every four years, rumor has it around campus, the Colorado College Block Plan results in an extra Block Break after Block 3. Then, with Thanksgiving break beginning only a week into Block 4, we’re bound to have some varying and unique plans for this time of year. As a senior, I have gotten so used to my Block Break being combined with a Thanksgiving break, creating a mega-fall break — during which all of my friends from home judge and concur that I “literally never have school!” Regardless of their skepticisms, this is something new and shocking but also exciting to hear about people’s plans for it.
It coincides with an election season this year because of the Thursday Thanksgiving lands on. I wonder what sort of response is in the works from CC students. Will it be preferred? Will it be an inconvenience to the learning taking place over Block 4, or is it even a moment to get a glimpse of what it would be like to be at literally any other university in the nation, where breaks occur in the middle of a course? I know people who are always looking for a buffer in the middle of an intense block…
As an English major on the creative writing track, naturally, I will be in a creative writing block, and I imagine this pause which I will spend at home in Los Angeles, to be beneficial to the course work. Going home, being around family, and then returning to Colorado to finish the course could be the kind of research that the Block Plan often prevents its students from experiencing. But if I were in a STEM class, perhaps I wouldn’t be so enthused. But maybe they’ll have an extra week to catch up and study.
As for the Block Break, I asked many students what their plans were and opinions on the timing of it all because, in all our times at CC, this hasn’t happened yet. Many are wondering, does this mean we’ll have actual work to do during our fall break? What sort of liberties will professors take when assigning reading, homework, and papers even, during this fall break?
Neuro major Sarah Cloninger ‘25 shared with me some feelings about the above question: “I’m going to be in Neuropharmacology next block, and I think the break will add stress or rather the class will add stress to the break. I’m always really excited to go home during Thanksgiving and not have to think about class, however, that probably won’t be the case this time around. It will also be very weird to come back to school for only two weeks. I’m hoping that the professors take into account that this is a break and treat it as one so that we can enjoy it as we have in the past.” As for block break, Cloninger intends to stay on campus due to their being separate breaks.
Depending on how today’s results go (I am writing this on Tuesday, Nov. 5), I have a feeling I could really use some much-needed family time, just to digest everything that is going down. As the daughter of an OBGYN, devoting her career and life to fighting relentlessly for the reproductive rights of women, confidentiality of choice, and the right to choose, I am scared, and I imagine if, I don’t want to say the possibility out loud, Trump wins, I am going to need to be with family.
On November 13, students have a Block Break until the following Monday, November 18. Then, on the proceeding Friday, November 22, fall break commences until the return to classes, Monday, December 1. The last time the schedule looked like this was during the 2020-2021 school year, also a November with a very important election.
Peers are creating last-minute plans for this additional Block Break as my friend Nathalie San Fratello ‘25 puts it: “I have no idea (what I am doing), finding an adventure,” and what kind of adventure? “I wanna go to a hot springs,” of course! She goes on to state that the schedule change is exciting as something to try out once but also inconvenient. I could see why that is the case, as the breaks are now split apart, and there is a shorter time frame separating fall break from winter break, making those three weeks, we can assume, pretty quick.
Next, I reached out to my co-worker, co-editor of the Catalyst, Brett LeVan ‘26, because I knew that on top of the unique Block Plan schedule change for the 2024-2025 CC school year, she is also going abroad for Block 4, and I wondered how that would work. After sharing that she would go home to Kansas following Block 3’s conclusion, LeVan says, “It’s quite strange because I’m taking the India block abroad (during) Block 4, and we’re leaving the Friday before Thanksgiving to still have three-and-a-third weeks in India, so it’s a bit weird but we have the first week of Block 4 off.” Even with this schedule change to the block plan, professors are still able to adapt to these changes and make a block abroad happen. This is the class’s third year doing this course, titled Performance Away-India, a dance and theater course.
As for myself, I am using this Block Break to visit my older sister who lives in England at Oxford University. Because I am in a thesis Block, I can leave school a little bit earlier and work on my thesis remotely, in the comforts of a country where Donald Trump is not the President-elect and likely would never be elected there. So yeah, I am optimizing my time in another country, getting a glimpse at what it could look like to be a student with a Visa in another country for a couple years. It may be just what I need.