Here’s what y’all missed over Winter Session.
I had a 12:00PM class every day, and that class lasted until 1:45PM every day. Conveniently, however, the first 15 minutes of each class contained no learning, because the old bell tower in Memorial insisted on chiming on and on (even going so far, one day, as to play Christmas songs one after another). In this same class, I was entertained by an exam for the first time ever – grad students get bored just like us, and I suppose writing Archer characters into the exam made writing it just a bit more tolerable.
I also had an online class. Let me tell you what an online class is like: you can read every chapter in the textbook, take notes on all the UDCapture lectures, and pour your heart and soul into that essay – but you can still get the same grade as your friend who never even bought the textbook. Despite the seeming unfairness there, however, I loved my online class. All the responsibility was on me to actually learn and grow from the material, and I took advantage of that opportunity.
However, Winter Session classes aren’t the highlight of the time. The absolute best part of Winter session is the absolute and utter appreciation it will give you for Fall and Spring semesters. My fellow freshman Winter students and I quickly learned the harsh, harsh world of UD Winter Session when we discovered that not only had the Caesar-Rodney dining hall been shut down for the session, the new dining hall, Kent, was farther away from Redding than CR was. This, coupled with the monotony of 90-minute long MTWRF classes, caused our seemingly opportunistic group to fall into despair.
Yet, fear not! Winter Session was not all weariness and woes. Two shining lights appeared to me in the form of food… delicious food. First, there was the Hot Chocolate Festival in the Perkins Student Center. Multiple different forms of hot chocolate, innumerable toppings, a photo booth, and a guess-how-many jar of jellybeans combined into the single most amazing hot-chocolate centered event I have ever attended. The second of these foodtastic events was particularly my favorite. The Kent Dining Hall (now renamed Kent Express Lounge) hosted a “Restaurant Night” where the entire dining hall and staff acted like a five-star establishment. There was fancy chocolate cake, chicken parm, and tons of other delicious dishes. Yet the most delectable dish was the steak – a hunk of meat and fat nearly an inch thick, with roasted broccoli and whatever else I wanted… it was truly heaven. I had like, five slices.
All in all, I think Winter Session was a valuable experience. I gained another couple thousand dollars of good, ol’ fashioned debt, but I really enjoyed myself – the remaining people in Redding were sort of like a family, eating dinner together and having our own GroupMe. And the simplicity was nice, too – when everyone else came back for Spring, it felt almost overwhelming. Not having to worry about events or RSOs or anything variable, just going to class after class and falling into a nice routine… Winter session truly was a simpler time.
