New Year, Old Expectations

By Alexa David-Lang ‘22

Congratulations, we made it through 2020! We left behind a horrible year of quarantining and wearing masks and so much more, so now we can finally start anew. The only problem is that some people see this new year as a reset and delete button. Those people are the teachers at Bard.

Since the new year has started, I’ve noticed that a large number of me and my friends’ teachers have been assigning a lot more work and have been a lot less understanding. Now, this is to be expected because it is finals season, but it still is significant that we are still in a pandemic. Many teachers considered the new year to mean that the worst of it is over, so they have had a lot less sympathy.

I will give you an example. Here is a list of all of my final projects, tests, and more for this semester: 3 essays, 2 presentations, 3 final exams, plus another exam that is not related to the final. I do not just want to be complaining about this because it makes sense that I would have a considerably larger amount of work to do for finals as this is my first year in the college program. But when you think about all of the students who have to take care of other family members or don’t have a stable internet connection or are worrying about finding food, it is a lot. 

Something else that I have noticed is that while many teachers are unhappy with how little class time they have, they also use a lot of it for things that are not related to class. Especially with what happened on January 6th, many teachers spent at least part of a class period having a discussion. Obviously, this is an important subject to talk about because people were very worried, upset, and emotional. The part where this goes a little overboard is when the teachers do not shift the rest of the class schedules accordingly. I love that Bard teachers are able to check in with students and talk about current events, which is extremely helpful. But it starts being less helpful when classwork gets squished into even less time. Think about it this way: the majority of my classes right now meet 3 times a week, once with the other class in my section and twice with just my section. If a teacher uses 1 class period to discuss something, they are down to 2 class periods that week, 1 of which is with a larger group so it might be harder for some to ask questions and get more personalized attention.

It is difficult for me to write this because Bard does care about their students but also sometimes causes more problems for them. Bard left what would have been regents week as a time for students to make up missed assignments, but also for this semester, lunch was broken up into 25 minutes for lunch and 25 minutes for advisory. Teachers are very available for office hours but also will assign work on a Sunday afternoon that is due on Monday. It is a fine line to walk to make sure that teachers and faculty are listening to their students but also getting things done.

I was hopeful when this school year started because most, if not all, of my teachers started off the year by saying that they understood that we would not be able to get through a lot of the usual material because we were meeting less frequently. I was really proud of the teachers and faculty members for really listening to feedback from students and parents and being okay with this strange situation. But it is important that we all do not see this new year as a fresh start to everything. Sure, it is nice to have new year resolutions and make plans for the year ahead, but there is still a lot of work to be done. Things won’t just magically fix themselves. We need to continue to consider the pandemic but also not drive ourselves crazy with school. Student-teacher communication is so important, this year in particular, and we need to speak up if we need help. Hopefully, we will get that help.