Remember that moment?
When you saw that the school you were going to spend the next and most important four years of your life at was on the quarter system. When you figured out your school year would begin in late September and finish in mid-June. When the very structure and foundation of everything you had ever known and familiarized yourself with collapsed and detonated into a mushroom cloud of disenchantment and exasperation. When you stormed out of your house into the middle of the street, tore off your clothes and screamed until your lungs caved in and dried out like two little raisins of anger. Or something like that.
Point is, the quarter system can be frustrating. While it can be irritating, the UC system uses it for a reason, and there are actually many benefits.
1. Your friends have an opportunity to hang out, without you.
You know how sometimes you wonder if you’re that friend in your group whom no one actually really likes, but they invite you to things because you grew up with one of them and they would feel bad if they didn’t bring you along? Yeah, that could actually be the case. This way, when they want to go to the beach in May and don’t feel like inviting you, they don’t have to and there's no guilt.
2. Motivation disappears at the end of your year.
Motivation is this terrible thing that forces you to sit down at your desk and do stuff. And stuff sucks. Without motivation, you spend most of your time watching TV and eating fun snacks. With motivation you do things like “hit the books” (which hurts) and study. By the middle of June, your motivation is about as relevant and active in your life as Jason Russell and Invisible Children were in Kony’s. So you can sit back, relax, and fail all your classes knowing that you don’t give a crud and a half about it.
3. No dead week!
If you had weird, dorky friends in high school and one of them ended up at Berkeley, you’ve probably heard of “dead week,” a phenomenon which lets students study before their finals without interruption from classes. It gives students an opportunity to go into their finals feeling prepared and refreshed, in order to maximize the potential for success. This, in laymen's terms, is known as being a yellow-bellied weakling. The way to go into finals is kicking and screaming, being dragged by the forces of time against every ounce of your will until the mere mention of a scantron gives you odd and scary nightmares.
4. Okay, so maybe the quarter system isn’t so great.
