It's been a few months since READY Day, and the public outcry has died down. However, the effects are still taking place, and they have a big impact on finals week.
The concept of READY Day is a really good one; allowing students to begin making connections with people in the workforce and learn firsthand about experiences and pathways on different career journeys is an amazing opportunity. However, a lot of things caused this opportunity to fall short of the mark.
For starters, there was not enough room for the students. Many complaints about READY Day stemmed from students being removed from sessions due to overfilling. Even after removals, students ended up having to sit on the floor or stand on the side of classrooms as all of the seats were filled.
A relatively easy fix for this, as well as the numerous parking issues, is to spread the event over two days. The freshmen and sophomores attend one day, while the juniors and seniors attend another. While it might seem like a pain, the benefits far outweigh having two days of classes cancelled rather than just one. This would allow for things like first-year seminars to happen without allotting for a large chunk of time that upperclassmen have to spend waiting for their sessions to come around.
The big issue causing problems for students now is the schedule shift caused by READY Day. Finals start on a Friday as a result of the event, which causes an awkward gap between the first day of testing and the rest of the dreaded final week of school. Add in the additional awkward timing of Reading Day, another new event for campus, and student schedules feel strangely paced and confusing.
Frankly, the fix for this would be to just not schedule things in such a cramped way. Properly planning out the dates of READY Day and Reading Day before the year, with student disposition in mind, would go a long way in moderating stress and manufacturing better results for both READY Day and finals week.
These fixes aren't an incredible ask; Otterbein keeping its students in mind during events purely focused on benefiting said students is a pretty simple request. If READY Day is to continue being a requirement for graduation, the least the school could do would be to make the event a comfortable experience that leaves attending students focused on the positives rather than the several problems that arose throughout the course of the day.
What determines a snow day at Otterbein?
