Syllabus Week

It is with great humility that I beg my professors: please stop confusing me.

I’m one day into the semester. One day. What do I have to be confused about? My textbooks have yet to be cracked open, my college ruled notebooks’ spiral bindings are still intact. I’ve barely memorized my class schedule, much less have a knowledge of my friends’ to arrange lunch together even one day of the week. I’m confused, I’m hurt, and I’m feeling dejected.

Why, oh why, can’t I seem to understand the syllabi?

This has been a problem about which I have been upset since my first day of college. There I sat, a newly minted high school graduate in my very first course, and I was handed a schedule. In theory, it was simple: a mere packet of information about what to expect in the coming fifteen weeks at school. In actuality, it was a dense forest of facts and figures about the class—half of which would remain irrelevant until eight weeks into the semester, following midterm exams.

The syllabi that initially confused me still do, and I think that the problem is easily identifiable: the lack of uniformity across classes. Each professor appears to have a different interpretation of how a syllabus should look. Some write a paragraph about each day, detailing the nature of the in-class discussion and the homework with which it is associated. Others simply bullet important points one should know about the class and keep the specifics nebulous, promising to make more arrangements at a later date, when future teachings will be more relevant.

Still others make a handy chart (my personal preference). But then, within that calendar-esque entity seemingly so helpful, we encounter that singular source of dread so especially vague that it forces us to write our plans out in pencil so that we can completely redo our schedules at a later date: the term “Assignment.”

Okay, so it’s a task we must complete. Obviously. But it is due ON the date listed, or is it the homework FOR the date listed? Why isn’t anyone making that clear?! How am I supposed to prepare for that quiz, or make time to write that analysis, if you, my omnipotent professor, can’t let me know what I actually need to do in order to be ready for each class in the first place? How am I supposed to plan my semester if I can’t understand very clearly what’s expected of me?

Look, I’m in college. I don’t want to have to put more thought into the thinking I must do every other week of the semesters.

My friends at state schools who moved back a week earlier than I did sent me snapchat videos of wild parties on Monday night, or family dinners on Tuesday. “Sylly Week,” they call it, as though they don’t need to worry about actually completing any tasks assigned by the syllabus, and can instead pardon their excessive partying for yet another week in the face of traditional school schedules. And honestly I don’t know if they do or are just choosing to ignore them, because I’m too confused about why they’re using a term of endearment for one of the most stressful weeks of the year for some of us.

I propose, belatedly and unheroically, that we figure out a means of defeating this dilemma, reducing the need for an organization of our organizing. Let us turn every syllabus week into a “sylly” week and decrease our stress. A syllabus is supposed to be a plan. Give us a plan to make a plan, and make it clearly.