Vacation Frenzy!

Beyond doubt, everyone deserves to take time-out and unwind . it makes us feel revitalized when we are back at work. The right to a vacation is earned by work churned out tirelessly during the rest of the year. However, the question that pops up is – is it commonsense to let the most crucial part of the academic year (i.e. students graduating or arriving) coincide with the annual vacation period?

Fresh, new students leave their homes to live and study for two years in a totally unfamiliar environment. Naturally they panic when their queries via email are met with out-of-office replies just days before traveling. It wasn’t amusing to find a few students from India emailing me, because there was no one at the MSc office replying to their queries. Much as we would like to be of help to our juniors, this simply isn’t sending the right message for a professional university.

I too was a victim of the vacation season, and it was far from enjoyable. The student administration of my department called me to say that the grade of one of my compulsory courses hadn’t been registered . and this was just a few of days before the cut-off date. It was a hapless situation where the lecturer who had conducted the oral exam was on vacation, and so was the secretary, and so was the professor in charge of the course! Lucky for me the professor got back and sorted the problem efficiently in just a matter of minutes – on the very last day. For me it felt like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. The moral of this story . when something goes wrong during such a crucial period (and true to Murphy’s Law, something always does go wrong) . there’s no one around to handle it. We international students work with very tight deadlines, mainly imposed by our scholarship contracts and visa regulations. While the rest of the fraternity is on vacation, we are losing our sleep under the pressure of having to wind everything up on time. Not the perfect moment for the entire machinery (bureaucracy) to break down owing to vacation!

Why can’t the academic year start and end when it doesn’t coincide with the time when most administrative offices are deserted? Would it be so difficult for the one of the best universities in Europe to plan this better? Or are students just meant to continue feeling helpless and frustrated before arriving and while graduating? I experienced this feeling two years ago, and also again now when I’m graduating. I have nothing against any faculty member or administrative staffer having a great vacation, which of course they very much deserve. But this clumsy system better well change!

Ramesh Chidambaram uit India is MSc-student micro-elektronica.

Summer time promulgates a vacation frenzy that permeates through every facet of student life. Anyone lined up for graduation or wanting to make their way to TU Delft from abroad knows this from the collection of ‘out-of-office’ replies that pile up in our email boxes. Beyond doubt, everyone deserves to take time-out and unwind . it makes us feel revitalized when we are back at work. The right to a vacation is earned by work churned out tirelessly during the rest of the year. However, the question that pops up is – is it commonsense to let the most crucial part of the academic year (i.e. students graduating or arriving) coincide with the annual vacation period?

Fresh, new students leave their homes to live and study for two years in a totally unfamiliar environment. Naturally they panic when their queries via email are met with out-of-office replies just days before traveling. It wasn’t amusing to find a few students from India emailing me, because there was no one at the MSc office replying to their queries. Much as we would like to be of help to our juniors, this simply isn’t sending the right message for a professional university.

I too was a victim of the vacation season, and it was far from enjoyable. The student administration of my department called me to say that the grade of one of my compulsory courses hadn’t been registered . and this was just a few of days before the cut-off date. It was a hapless situation where the lecturer who had conducted the oral exam was on vacation, and so was the secretary, and so was the professor in charge of the course! Lucky for me the professor got back and sorted the problem efficiently in just a matter of minutes – on the very last day. For me it felt like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. The moral of this story . when something goes wrong during such a crucial period (and true to Murphy’s Law, something always does go wrong) . there’s no one around to handle it. We international students work with very tight deadlines, mainly imposed by our scholarship contracts and visa regulations. While the rest of the fraternity is on vacation, we are losing our sleep under the pressure of having to wind everything up on time. Not the perfect moment for the entire machinery (bureaucracy) to break down owing to vacation!

Why can’t the academic year start and end when it doesn’t coincide with the time when most administrative offices are deserted? Would it be so difficult for the one of the best universities in Europe to plan this better? Or are students just meant to continue feeling helpless and frustrated before arriving and while graduating? I experienced this feeling two years ago, and also again now when I’m graduating. I have nothing against any faculty member or administrative staffer having a great vacation, which of course they very much deserve. But this clumsy system better well change!

Ramesh Chidambaram uit India is MSc-student micro-elektronica.