Once you go out into the real world of work, you’ll discover that many businesses offer their employees not only sick days and vacation time but also personal days. You usually only are granted a few of these, but they are days that you can simply decide not to come into work for any reason ranging from celebrating your birthday to attending a parent day at your child’s school to recovering from the mental breakdown you had last night.
As students, we are granted no such luxury. Obviously, we are not paid for being students, and the work we do is to benefit ourselves in our future endeavors rather than advancing a company, so it could be argued that to ask for the same luxuries granted by a paying job might be overstepping bounds.
We do have vacation time built into our education with periodic breaks ranging from a few days to a few weeks depending on the season which I don’t mean to negate. With the massive amount of stress, students are under between schoolwork, extracurriculars, career planning, and a whole host of other things, this periodic and pre-set vacation time isn’t always sufficient.
Students have very little, if any, time left for nurturing and growing relationships, relaxation, physical fitness, or anything else necessary for maintaining wellbeing. Some students don’t even get to relax during their breaks due to nationwide tours with the school orchestra, the necessity of working full-time to pay for tuition or even just being bogged down with an unbelievable amount of homework from professors who don’t understand the essence of a break.
Besides these breaks built into the school year, any time students miss a class it counts against them. Most classes have a certain number of allowed absences built into them, but even then, professors often ask for a “valid” reason for missing class like a family emergency or a job interview. And these absences don’t discriminate between life events that come up and sick days.
Professors also often look down on students that miss classes and can be reluctant to grant alternate exam times or essay extensions for students without what they consider to be a good reason. While I can understand why professors are sometimes leery because they’re afraid of students taking advantage, this mindset can be harmful to the wellbeing of students who really need the extra time.
I believe students should be granted personal days for the wellbeing of their mental health: a day to sleep in until noon, a day to catch up on homework they fell behind on, or a day to go home and connect with family and friends. The student should not just be allowed to have that day, but commended for prioritizing their mental and physical health because without, how can they be expected to be successful and functioning adults?
