<p>This is "Dead Week" at DD2's university. This is the tenth week of classes and professors are limited on how much additional material they can add. Starting today, the library is open round-the-clock for late night studying. This week, students are to wind down in their classes and begin gearing up for finals next week.</p>
<p>But, two of DD2's professors are having the final exams this week on the last day of class. These are both upper division classes in her majors. And, in a third Honors College class, her final paper, worth 50% of her grade, is due!</p>
<p>DD2 was trying to study and work on her paper over the weekend, but university support system is not set up for finals during Dead Week. The library closed early on both Friday (6 pm) and Saturday (7 pm) evenings. I stopped by her house near campus on Saturday and it was a typical college night -- lots of kids on the streets, music, etc. DD2 was trying but had no quiet place to study.</p>
<p>She is overwhelmed. In addition to these two finals and major paper this week, she has mandatory Senate meetings (she is a Senator) and must attend all her regular classes. </p>
<p>Dead week is usually a period of time before finals when there are NO classes. So I’m confused by this-
“must attend all her regular classes.”
Doesn’t sound like “dead Week” to me. Especially this part-
“The library closed early on both Friday (6 pm) and Saturday (7 pm) evenings”</p>
<p>your D should email the Dean, the Provost and the President of the college if this really is dead week.</p>
<p>My D’s school has “Dead Week” this week too. My college didn’t have this, but I had always thought it referred to a period when there were no classes and the students were given time to study for finals and work on final papers and projects. But D still has regular classes also. I don’t understand.</p>
<p>^We called it reading period. As I recall there were always a few classes that continued meeting. Maybe languages? Maybe studio classes which didn’t have final projects?</p>
<p>At my daughters school they call it reading week but not all teachers abide by that. Some hold classes, some give finals or have final papers due. You say two are upper level classes, I’m sure the professors think an upper level student should be able to handle it. Also, didn’t she know this when the profs handed out the syllabus in the beginning of the term? </p>
<p>Get over it, life isn’t fair nor do people always follow the rules. She’ll learn to deal and might even be happy once it’s all over since she’ll be done with the term earlier than others.</p>
<p>Agree. Get over it. Plenty of schools didn’t/don’t have these “facilitating” schedules of reading period/dead week (I never even heard of dead week until this thread).</p>
<p>There are lots of stressful times in a college career and in the future work career. Time pressures, conflicting responsibilities, distractions.</p>
<p>Surely she did not recently find out that the paper worth half her grade is due this week? Sounds like she is responsible about her academics, so I’m sure she prepared for this.</p>
<p>Having two professors schedule final exams before exam week sounds like two violations of college policy and bad luck on the student’s part to catch both of them. It wouldn’t be inappropriate to whine a little to the department chair or a dean, but I wouldn’t expect any relief as a result.</p>
<p>It’s “reading week” at my son’s school too. However he has one final today and a final paper (also very significant part of the grade) due Wednesday. At his school, I believe reading week is observed by the LAS department but I don’t think all departments follow this. He’s a freshman and had the same thing happen first quarter. </p>
<p>I do think it’s unfortunate if the library wasn’t available as a quiet study spot for your D if the rest of the school isn’t in study mode yet. I’m sure she’s up to the challenge but understand how you feel. </p>
<p>I’ve been preaching to S from day one, quarters are FAST. Go through each syllabus immediately and plot all the assignments and due dates on the calendar/agenda book/whatever he uses for the whole quarter. And then check it religiously each week. </p>
<p>Hopefully your D has an easy finals week since these other classes are out of the way early.</p>
<p>If the finals were on the schedule from the beginning, there’s no recourse. But if the profs moved them up recently, such as because they decided they wanted to go on vacation early, then that’s a different matter.</p>
<p>My goodness. I don’t even have a clue what my D’s exam schedule/paper due dates/class schedule is, or whether they have a “dead week”, and I don’t want to know. This is all her business and her responsibility now, not mine, and she knows better than to whine at me about how “unfair” life is. Time to climb down out of the helicopter. Your kid will figure it out. (And do I even need to mention that her final paper could have been finished weeks ago if she had concerns about timing?) I highly recommend studying from 5 am to 9 am–the dorm is guaranteed to be quiet then!</p>
<p>It’s reading week at my son’s school - he has two finals today. I think he was actually glad to have finals during reading week, since now he’ll just have two finals during finals week.</p>
<p>At the college I attended, the only accommodations made for the week before finals involved extended quiet time in dorms. There certainly were no special accommodations made for the weekend prior to the week prior to finals. I always thought that the expression “dead week” referred to the condition of students as they approached final exams (dead tired), not the condition of the campus and classes (dead quiet/dead of activity). Interesting to find the variety of approaches at different schools.</p>
<p>We had a reading week as well. The intent was certainly to have it be a true reading week, no classes whatsoever. I don’t ever remember hearing about a class session being held during that time (other than optional review sessions), though I wouldn’t bet heavily on it never happening. I agree with JHS – it might be worthy of an inquiry, but don’t expect relief.</p>
<p>At S1’s school Dead Week was the last week of classes before exams. They still attended all classes but Professors were not to assign any new projects,papers,tests,etc during dead week.
At S2’s school, there is no Dead Week. Instead they have two reading days (no classes) between end of classes and start of exams.
Last spring sem. S2 had three huge final exams in one day. It was tough but he got through it.</p>
<p>There’s no need to be snarky to the OP, who is just worried about her daughter. Worry does not necessarily constitute helicoptering and it sounds like the D told her mom she is feeling overwhelmed. Also, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the OP to be confused about why there are exams during “Dead Week”.</p>
<p>Yeah. I don’t keep track of my kid’s exam schedule, either. But after a series of unmistakably emo e-mails (not about classes or exams), and in the middle of a phone conversation last night (our first in over a week) that included a lot of barely-holding-it-together about trivial things (not classes or exams), the penny finally dropped and I asked, “Uh, are exams coming up soon? What’s your schedule?” And darn if there aren’t three papers and an exam in the next 10 days . . . .</p>
<p>I, too, typically understood the term ‘dead week’ to refer to a time period when there are no classes right before final exams. At my U, we have ‘dead days’ because there is a day or two of no classes before exams, not an entire week.</p>
<p>It seems that in some places, this term has expanded to include the time period before exam period, whether or not there are classes.</p>
<p>At my U, there is a policy that finals are not supposed to be given on the last day of class. So I would check to see if there is something similar at your D’s U.</p>
<p>With respect to final papers, there is typically no policy and instructors set the due date at their discretion. Some have them due the last day of class, some during the exam period, etc. It is not atypical at all to have them due on the last day of class, so this is not unusual. </p>
<p>You have to realize also that there is a deadline for submitting grades (sometimes just a day or two after the last final exam). When an instructor has most of his/her final exams at the end of exam week, it gets very difficult to grade all the exams and papers before the deadline. So in this way it makes sense to have your final papers due earlier.</p>
<p>I know it’s hard to just let your kid figure it out, but trust me, there will come a time when she will have all sorts of work deadlines that actually aren’t possible to meet, and she will have to “choose” wht to let slide and what to handle. This is all I told my daugther her first quarter. I said, “From here on out in your life you are repeatedly going to face situations where you physically CAN’T get done every single thing you have to do and now is when you start to learn what to handle and what to let go.” </p>
<p>Life is just like that. Sometimes we just can’t do everything we have to do, and we need to learn how to “make it work” and how to choose where to focus, how to use our time, how to figure out where the biggest pay off will come from…What percentage is the paper worth? What percentage is the final worth? How many revisions of the paper? Can you take a “b” on the paper, a “b” on the final, or even, if you can’t get anything above a b or below a b- no matter what you get on the paper, as long as you get a c? She needs to learn how to do the academic math.</p>
<p>I had 10-week quarters in college and had no dead week. Some professors gave final exams on the last week but the final time was shorter than the formal exams (50 minutes in regular lectures versus formal 3 hours long). Some professors had optional final exams (students took them only to improve grades). Early exams can be an advantage to some students or a disadvantage to some others. However, if the professors have the exams scheduled ahead on the syllabus then there is no ground for complaint.</p>