Embrace perks of quarter system

Now that finals week has reared its ugly head, it may seem
convenient to take out all our problems on the quarter system.

Ten weeks isn’t enough time! You mean we have three sets
of finals a year? I missed one lecture and now I feel like
I’m four weeks behind.

Perhaps we have forgotten how beautiful the quarter system
looked 10 weeks ago, when a whole term’s worth of assignments
fit easily on one sheet of paper. Perhaps we can’t really
recall weeks one through three and weeks six and seven, when we got
drunk every night because nothing was due.

You’re really going to hold a grudge just because
it’s finals week?

Come on. Let’s all join hands and take the time to honor
the quarter system ““ our very own blessing in disguise, a
bittersweet cycle of scattered notes, unorganized papers and
caffeine-driven finals.

Sure, sometimes it moves a little too fast. Midterms or papers
come every few weeks. Finals creep up just as the course is
starting to make sense, and we forget that the semester system,
averaging an extra five to eight weeks, requires students to take
extra classes.

We need to be reminded that the quarter system emphasizes the
benefits of focus. Fewer courses in each term means fewer finals we
need to worry about come finals week. An extra five to eight weeks
in each term doesn’t mean just more time, but more
material.

The quarter provides for more diversity in coursework. At
Berkeley, the English major consists of 12 classes , while at UCLA,
the English major consists of 17 classes.

Both majors, of course, result in a bachelor’s degree from
a world-class university. The UCLA student, however, has the
opportunity to take as many as five extra classes.

This trend extends to other departments on campus. Whether
we’re studying 1,000 years of English literature, 2,000 years
of history or the last 50 years of genetic research, the
opportunity to take classes in a diversity of topics, within and
outside of your major, is a blessing.

It’s also easier to schedule classes we need for our
majors, or ones that routinely fill up, since each class is
potentially offered three times a year, and with different
professors. More quarters mean more classes are taught each year,
which means more choices.

Sure, we could gripe about a few things. Some professors think
they have to cram a semester’s worth of content into 10
weeks. Others love to pack in as many midterms as possible, or
require that papers be turned in before the material the
paper’s on is covered in lecture.

Two years ago, faculty voted 74 percent to 20 percent to keep
UCLA on the quarter system. According to an editorial written by
Professor Robert Kirsner in the Daily Bruin in 2003, semesters
would probably mean professors would have to teach more and neglect
their research. Sure, semesters might benefit students, since
professors would spend more time in the classroom. But that
neglects the importance of research at UCLA, which makes it the
world-class university it is. Quarters aren’t necessarily
fun, but semesters aren’t any better, especially since the
potential switch to semesters was estimated to cost $6 million in
2003 .

And in the end, would a few extra weeks really make a
difference? How many papers did we finish this quarter at 4 in the
morning the night before they were due? How many midterms did we
stay up all night to study for? How many classes did we skip?

We don’t need more time, we need more discipline ““
additional weeks would just make us lazier. Quarters keep us on
schedule. If not for their quick pace and relentless examinations,
we would be even more lost. Our finals this week could be worse. It
could be 14 or 18 weeks of material we neglected.

Going to fail a class? Tell Macdonald all about it at
[email protected]. Send general comments to
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