Spring Break 2025

Spring break 2025

When I was teaching I hated spring break. It would literally wipe out two and a half months of learning. It takes time for the students to get used to me. My methods are different than what they generally see. I link every lecture to current events. I send them stories from the financial press that supplement the book. I post current statistics and compare them to the ones in the text that are usually 4 years old. I call on them to answer questions at every class. If they don’t know the answer I tell them to guess. I tell them that there will no multiple choice true false exams only essays short answers and problems and they cannot use a calculator. Some drop immediately. After the first exam, more will drop. In this class I started out with 59 students. Seven dropped after the first class. Seventeen more did not come back after the first exam. The ones that remain are now used to me. The classes are more focused and no longer am I the only one having fun. 

And now to ruin it all and set me back comes Spring Break. When the students return from Spring Break, they don’t want to be back in school. They have spent a week in the sun, drinking, being rowdy and doing who knows what (I know). They are mellow. The last thing they want to do is to sit in a classroom and listen to lectures of systematic risk and immunization of portfolios. It is back to square one. Some never readjust. It is worse if they are graduating seniors. All they want to do is to graduate and leave. Spring break makes it worse. They don’t want to be there and the class now becomes a boring burden.

For me, the only saving grace for spring break arriving used to be BikeWeek which comes right after the Daytona 500. We used to go most every year. Spring break always begins when BikeWeek ends. The people in Daytona used to say that the BikeWeek crowds were their favorite. They were polite. Maybe they rode load Harleys on the street but they were quiet in the hotels. We no longer go. The vibe has completely changed. Once it was mostly older riders who went to the shops on Main Street and to the vendors at the Daytona Speedway. We would go to the races at the track as well. Then the kids on their sport bikes started coming. The crowds got rowdy and the cops less tolerant. The hotel where we always stayed stop allowing trailer parking after changing ownership, raised their prices and ended their happy hour. We used to have get togethers with riders with the same bike – then a Honda ST1100. That ended as well. It was not the same so we quit going.

This year for the first time, I am looking forward to spring break which is the week of March 17^th because I need the break. This has been an interesting semester. There are some very strong students but in the main, they have been tested using multiple choice true false which has yielded mainly students who cannot think and cannot reason. Although I park in the lot closest to the classroom building, it is up a fairly steep grade and my knees are perpetually sore. I am now walking like an old man. I have still not seen another professor when I venture up to talk to the secretary versed in the new technology. This generation considers the university as just a job and not a service. I could not be on such a faculty. This is a one off.

So I am looking forward to being able finally to go chill out at the farm, cutting up fallen timber, doing tractor work, moving my blinds and sitting on the front porch with a hot cup of tea, a good book and a cigar. I need the break.