Students Respond to the Academy’s New Pilot Schedule

By ARYAN AGARWAL, SAM ALTMAN, HANNA WEI, and FORREST ZENG

The new spring term pilot schedule, announced earlier this year, has prompted mostly positive reactions from faculty and students alike, although some still believe there are areas for improvement. 

The schedule features changes to the length of class blocks, transition periods, and homework guidelines. The one-term pilot is part of a larger effort to isolate a suitable schedule for the Academy. Principal William Rawson previously stated to The Exonian, “The idea is to gain experience with the pilot schedule so that we might be in a better position to compare it to our current and pre-pandemic schedules and make a more informed decision about the optimal schedule for the long term.”

Students and faculty generally perceive the schedule as better than they expected. Upper Jacques Leleux said, “My initial reaction to the pilot schedule was rather negative, and I think that’s how many of my fellow students felt. That stems from a couple things. One was a very real concern about some of the major changes they made to the schedule. And two, a general distrust of things changing and worrying how these are going to affect our lives, which is a very real concern, but I think the pilot schedule has exceeded all expectations I’ve had for it.” 

  Prep Grace Yang shared this sentiment. “Honestly, I thought I would hate the schedule. However, mine is pretty good this term, because I am not taking a health class,” she said.

Lower Christian Salaun agreed. “I thought the schedule would be a lot worse than it is right now,” he said. “But, it’s turned out to be a beneficial change.” 

The slightly more spaced schedule has found support in many members of the community. “I feel like I have a little bit more time during the day to get my bearings,” Classics Department Chair Matthew Hartnett said.

The new homework guidelines have received mixed reactions from students. Some students feel that the homework guidelines, as well as the spaced-out nature of the schedule, have relieved the rush of completing homework after classes. “There’s a lot less stress on having homework due since there are only four classes a day,” Salaun said. “I can do the homework for fewer classes, but the amount per class has gone up.”

Leleux commented, “There were a lot of things I wasn’t looking forward to: hour long classes, 10 minute passing periods, more homework per day. However, I think that focusing more on out-of-class work than in-class work and prioritizing having more time in between classes to be mentally ready and whatnot, has actually paid dividends and has made a lot of people much happier.”

On the other hand, although the guidelines for homework with the new pilot schedule decrease cumulative homework time per week slightly, some students still report an apparent increase in homework load. “I feel like I’m busier compared to the past two terms I’ve been at Exeter,” Yang said.

Lower Cecily Reed reported a similar experience, stating, “My homework load has been very considerable, much more than previous terms.”

“The fact that there’s more homework per class but fewer classes doesn’t change the fact that some days I might have more classes,” senior Luke Miller said. “On certain nights, I will have a lot more homework, simply because I have more classes the next day.”

“It just feels the same as last term,” he added. 

Prep Chris Spencer reflected a similar sentiment. “Teachers seem to assign more homework because there are fewer class meetings,” he said. “I’m disappointed that, despite classes ending close to the same time during the winter, there is still more work.”

This apparent increase in workload often comes with a sacrifice of sleep, a part of life that is greatly sought after at Exeter. Chair of the Religion Department Dr. Hannah Hofheinz said, “I’ve also heard from a number of students saying they’re struggling with sleep since the schedule is often pushing their workload even later.” 

A significant concern with the new schedule is a decrease in the number of meetings per class. Students have noticed that the new schedule has led to fewer overall free blocks, thereby decreasing the possibility of fitting other activities between classes. “The schedule has made it difficult to have a free block,” Reed said. “It’s made it hard to do things outside of class.”

With respect to in-class learning, some members of the community are also concerned that fewer meeting times may decrease the speed with which classes learn. “I would consider myself someone who appreciates less class time, but the schedule has made it difficult to study my language, Chinese,” Reed said.

Instructor in English Duncan Holcomb described that “the issue is, it seems like it will be difficult to teach a long novel with fewer classes. I’m already tending to go with poetry and short stories, or you could spend half the term just reading a novel.”

“For English, there used to be around 40 classes a term. Now, it’s around 30 classes—that’s a considerable reduction,” Holcomb added. “I’d be curious if there’s anybody in our faculty who thinks that we can do as good a job or as full a job as before.”

For many, however, fewer meetings per day has improved day to day life. “One thing that I’ve heard a number of students say is that they feel like the daytime is less stressful,” Dr. Hofheinz said. “Students like having longer, fewer classes per day.”

Hofheinz continued, “On the other hand, the students are also finding that they have limited free periods, especially with music groups taking up time in a free format or with all the meetings that show up in blocks that would otherwise be free. So not all students are experiencing the breaks to do work during the day the way they would hope to have.”

Although there are fewer meeting times for classes, the length of each class has increased substantially. For faculty and students alike the new schedule has increased the depth of Harkness learning in class. Hartnett said, “I find the 60-minute period useful. I feel that the previous block length, 50 minutes, was sometimes too short to build any momentum.” 

“Harkness discussions have benefited a lot,” Yang said. “It helps students get into the zone faster and go in-depth discussing their readings.”

Previously during the winter term, each department had a retreat day used to restructure course syllabuses and homework schedules in anticipation of the new pilot schedule. For Hartnett, there weren’t any significant changes made during the Classics Department’s retreat. “There weren’t as many changes required as we thought,” he said. “When you combine class time and homework time, the aggregate number is not very different. We were able to maintain just about the same amount of coverage and pace, just chunked up differently.”

While the previous schedule had an alternating schedule for Wednesday, the new schedule has substituted that cycle with set blocks every week. For the Wednesday schedule, students and faculty have expressed generally negative feedback, citing how the later release time can interfere with sports games.

“Last term, having two different Wednesdays felt more free,” Salaun said. “Now, with sports commitments, some people have to leave for other schools right after classes, since the day ends at 12:55 now.”

Many more students are required to attend class for all four blocks of the Wednesday schedule, a sharp contrast to the previous schedule. “Wednesday is a massive day for a lot of people,” Holcomb said. “It’s four hours of classes on a Wednesday morning, and when you think about it, does anyone want to attend a 30-minute meditation in the middle of that?”

The new schedule features a ten-minute passing period between classes. For some students, the passing period is slightly excessive. “The ten-minute passing periods are a little too long,” Salaun said. “I often find myself just sitting out in hallways, a lot longer than I normally needed to.”

Leleux somewhat disagreed, citing the benefits of more time between back-to-back activities. “I thought the new passing periods would just be an opportunity to just run back to my dorm or get Grill or something, and that I’d always be late to class because I’d have these delusional notions that I could get further than I actually could. But in many ways, they’ve actually allowed me to say hello to a friend in a hall and not be so crunched for time, or more academically, to be able to ask a teacher for help after class or to get comments. Overall, it’s provided more of a breather to these relationships with teachers and students.” 

Advisory has been shifted from Wednesday to before lunch on Fridays. Miller sees this shift as a positive, stating “You don’t have to go to advising and return to class anymore. Now, you can go straight to lunch. It’s like a 90-minute period to relax.”

The removal of short and long blocks from the schedule has also changed the lunch line at Grainger and Elm Dining Halls significantly. Since most students are now released at the same time every day for lunch, the lines accumulate much longer than before. “I’d say another complaint of mine with the schedule is how much the lunch lines have grown,” Salaun said. “Elm especially has gotten unbearable.”

Leleux agreed, “We don’t have long blocks anymore, and teachers have been told that they have to use the full class time in all cases. What that has resulted in is that we’re all getting out at the exact same time for lunch. And, as I’m sure we’ve all seen, the lines are often atrocious.”

For many members of the Academy community, especially faculty members, it is still too early to reach conclusions about the schedule. Hartnett said, “It’s certainly too early to tell how, in any comprehensive way, teaching and learning has changed.” 

“I think it’s really too early to say how the schedule will pan out. I hope that teachers and students alike stay the course with long homework, even if it’s hard, if it’s necessary to do the learning,” Hofheinz added.

Instructor in Science Tanea Hibler reflected, “I think that people get really comfortable doing things one way or another, so any change requires an adjustment period. And regardless of the schedule, I hope teachers, students, and administrators continue to be in dialogue about how to balance the needs of the institution with the needs of students and teachers. I hope that if this schedule doesn’t address some of the problems that came from the student surveys, then the school will continue to look for ways to improve student outcomes some other way.”

In a similar fashion, Leleux concluded, “I think the real story is how quickly opinions have flipped on the schedule. Before we entered the term, everyone hated it. And now it’s grown on me and a lot of my classmates. I think what that shows is that we can’t be afraid of change; we can’t be so stuck in our ways and we can’t complain about the schedule all the time, and then when somebody steps up to try and fix it, dog them and shame them for being so brash as to tamper with the system that we all know is broken.”