It's time BYU's "spring day" got the respect it deserves

It’s springtime in Provo, and alongside beautiful budding trees and warmer temperatures comes another indispensable element of the season – BYU students’ complaints about their lack of a spring break. While most institutions of higher education, including the one next door, have traditional week-long spring breaks, BYU students are gifted with the satirically named “spring day,” a three-day weekend at the end of March. Yet, these same disgruntled students bemoaning their shadow of a spring break are, believe it or not, the same ones who benefit from it. Not only does their shortened spring break allow for a unique academic calendar with a host of benefits, including greater flexibility in scheduling and earlier availability for job opportunities, but it also affords students all the mental health benefits of a longer vacation without the detriments.

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First, there are the logistical reasons. From a faculty standpoint, the institution of a spring break mainly boils down to a question of scheduling. While other universities’ academic calendars generally consist of semester, quarter, or trimester systems, BYU features somewhat of a hybrid system, seeking to achieve the benefits of each. The semester system’s advantage lies mainly in its length: students get more face-to face time with professors and can go into greater depth in their subjects. The quarter system allows for greater flexibility; the shorter quarter length enables students to explore other subjects while minimizing their workloads. Finally, the trimester system’s strength lies in its mysteriousness; researchers are yet to identify any of its benefits. 

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Both semester and quarter systems come with a short, one term summer option, and usually finish sometime in the beginning of June (Marshall 2019). BYU’s academic calendar combines the two. It features the in-depth learning opportunities offered by semesters, named fall and winter respectively, while offering not one, but two entirely optional summer terms, giving students the flexibility to add credits and classes between winter and fall semesters without sacrificing the entirety of their summer.

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The immediate benefits of the unique calendar system show up in a variety of ways. Notably, they allow for greater flexibility in study abroad programs. Rather than needing to commit one’s entire summer to study abroad, BYU students can participate in a study abroad program over one of their two summer terms, while retaining the option to work, vacation, or visit with family members during the course of the other term. As a result, BYU was ranked ninth in the country for students traveling abroad (Philbrick 2007). The same can be said about needing to tack on extra credits or knock out a pair of prerequisite classes – one can feel more at ease in doing so knowing they aren’t sacrificing the opportunity to work full-time during the other term.

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All this gives BYU students both the ability to take advantage of the freedom of their college years as well as the ability to graduate ahead of schedule, if they so choose. Since students can register for extra courses over two summer terms, they can knock out graduation requirements quickly while spending relatively little money on BYU’s subsidized tuition, and the graduation statistics show it.

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As evidenced by the graph above, compiled by a college ranking website, BYU’s six-year graduation rate is close to 62% for first-time students, and up to 66% overall, while the national six-year average graduation rate is 57.6%, as cited from the federal government’s statistics in education (Cappex 2020). Considering that over 65% of BYU students serve 18-24-month missions, a 66% 6-year graduation rate is astounding, and beyond its testament to the hard-working nature of BYU students, it’s a testament to the ability of students to graduate faster thanks to the flexible calendaring system.

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Perhaps most importantly, the hybrid system also benefits students seeking employment opportunities, both during and after their graduate studies. For those seeking employment between semesters, the ability to report to a job earlier can often make the difference between them and another candidate, not to mention the fact that, due to their arriving home sooner, they have more opportunities for work to choose from in the first place. This can be especially important when it comes to internships, in which students benefit from all the experience they can get.

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For those graduating after winter semester and seeking longer-term employment, the earlier release gives them more employment opportunities to choose from, more time to consider these opportunities, and more time to prepare for important interviews, which preparation can often make all the difference (Hollingshead 2017). Not surprisingly, BYU students were ranked number 13 in the country for being “job ready” in a recent ranking by Times Higher Education.

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The only apparent downside of the system is the casualty of a week-long spring break to a three-day weekend, due to the fact that the current system, including two summer terms and an education week, couldn’t coexist with it. For this reason, despite all of its logistical benefits, the notion that BYU should continue its three-day Spring Break is still quite unpopular. It’s hard for students to look at the underlying benefits of the current system when their mid-March social media feeds are filled with pictures of their friends vacationing in various locations, and beyond the obvious fact that a week-long Spring Break would be more fun than a 3-day one, students also prevalently believe that a week-long Spring Break would be beneficial to their mental health.

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The argument in favor of this week-long spring break goes something like this. It’s the middle of the winter semester, and with two months of classes behind them and no Thanksgiving or Christmas to look forward to, students’ energy and motivation are at an all-time low. Were there a week-long Spring Break to look forward to, not only would students have more energy leading up to the break, but they’d return rejuvenated and more ready to take on the remainder of the semester.

At face value, this argument certainly seems to carry some weight. But claims in this vein tend to rarely cite academic sources. In an attempt to do just that in a controversy dominated by anecdotes, various European organizational psychologists set out to study 176 Dutch adults who planned on taking similar 9-day-long winter sports vacations, the exact same length of a week-long Spring Break. In order to find an accurate measurement of health and well-being, de Bloom et. al. created questionnaires designed to capture seven integral elements of it (2010). Participants were given these questionnaires one week before vacation, during vacation, and one, two, and four weeks after vacation. As seen below, the study reveals that while vacations in themselves have obvious benefits, their effects on pre and post-vacation well-being are virtually non-existent. One-week post-vacation measures, with the exception of the element of fatigue, were essentially the same as the pre-vacation measures, hence dispelling the myth that week-long vacations provide the kind of rejuvenating energy many BYU students expect they will bring.

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Noting a lack of studies done on the effects of short-term vacations however, a group from the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health decided to take a group of forty German middle-manager and test just this. Twenty of these middle-managers spent their 4-night vacation, comparable to BYU’s three-day spring break, at home, while twenty spent their time at a Tyrolean Wellness Hotel. Results found immediate positive outcomes concerning stress-reduction and well-being recovery similarly to the studies mentioned earlier. However, differences begin to appear as the sustainability of these effects are observed. While stress levels in traditionally longer vacations returned to pre-vacation values, in shorter vacations, positive improvements could be found after fifteen, thirty, and even up to forty-five days after the trip had ended. Researchers credited this to a couple of reasons including the fact that returning to a work environment after a short break is much more bearable than after a longer hiatus.

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Prolonged stress reduction is not the only thing that a shorter break provides for BYU students or faculty. As noted by an article from NBC news, some added benefits include less expensive travel, a better chance to disconnect from everyday stressors, and a cutback on tension-inducing planning (Chu, 2018). Rather than embark on an expensive and straining weeklong venture, those that attend BYU can disconnect without a huge reality check waiting for them at the end, especially considering the host of national parks and ski resorts Utah Valley residents are fortunate to have within a reasonable distance.

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Beyond not providing rejuvenating energy, week-long vacations can actually be harmful to the positive habits formed with a new year. In a study tracking the gym attendance of 1,210 Danish fitness chain participants, it was found that attendance dropped significantly (by 12.25%) directly after Easter break, a break taking place between March 21stand 28th, similar to a week-long spring break. Notably, “the effect was especially profound for individuals below retirement age,” who had other responsibilities, like schoolwork, to return to, “and for individuals who had attended the gym with a higher frequency in the 6 weeks prior to the Easter break,” the very individuals who had developed the best habits (Fredslund, Klausen, and Leppin). If BYU students will plan ahead and take advantage of the host of short-term vacation opportunities surrounding them, they can reap the post-vacation benefits of short-term vacations all while retaining the positive habits they developed throughout the semester, since the return to school will feel much more natural and less shocking than the return from a week-long spring break would be.

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In their pleas for a week-long spring break, BYU students may also forget what college spring breaks have traditionally entailed for students. Next to the picturesque beaches are unhealthy levels of alcohol consumption, drug usage, and casual sex, not necessarily activities BYU wishes to associate its name with, nor activities in harmony with its honor code. Surely, if BYU students were granted a week-long spring break, their amount of alcohol consumption, drug usage, and casual sex would fall far, far below the national average, but that wouldn’t change the fact that they’d find themselves in environments famous for “situational disinhibition” (Eiser and Ford).

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A study by Maticka-Tyndale et al. on Canadian spring breakers in Daytona Beach, Florida revealed that 21% of male and 17% of female college students reported “engaging in coitus with a new partner,” while 15% and 13% respectively had done so with someone they’d met on the break itself. Perhaps more concerning is the fact that 46% of males made pacts to have sex, considering it a sign of a successful vacation, while Eiser and Ford’s study simultaneously found females to score higher in situational disinhibition, “e.g. feeling like a ‘different person’ on holiday.” 

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Though the majority of BYU students certainly would not plan vacations with the intention to engage in these activities, a minority would, and even among those who would not, they would still find themselves in an environment conducive to disinhibited behavior, an environment described by Josiam et al. as one in which “personal and social codes are temporarily suspended, behavioral constraints are removed, inhibitions fade, and consequently risks are taken which are avoided at home” (Herold and Van Kerwijk).

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Amidst complex calendar decisions, questions regarding the mental health and productivity of students, and the desire to honor BYU’s legacy and unique image, it’s no surprise BYU has elected for a three-day spring break in March as opposed to a week-long one. It’s easy to wish for a week-long vacation in the middle of a winter semester. It’s only human to crave an excuse for less work and more fun. But at the end of the day, the scale simply tilts in favor of the side with the more flexible schedule, the mental health benefits, and the more wholesome alternative to traditional spring breaks. There’s more to BYU’s spring break than the malicious denial of four vacation days. In fact, it might just be an unseen factor contributing to BYU students’ success, and it’s time it gets the respect it deserves.