A break is needed for all students, in-person and online

As the holidays have been running rampant this past week, it has reminded me of concerns I had during my first two semesters of college last year during festivities.

While Hutchinson Community College’s students enrolled in in-person classes got to gear up to relax and enjoy the holidays with their families and friends, online students had a much different experience.

For some reason, online students are not normally given holiday breaks.

Whether that be Thanksgiving, Spring Break, or other assignment recess, online students are still logged on.

In my experience, many teachers may push assignments back till the Sunday directly after the holiday so students are not required to submit an assignment on the holiday.

However, when every class does this, students must still work on their assignments throughout the break to stay on track and submit their classwork and responses by the due date.

For example, if someone has 15 assignments among 15 credit hours due that following Sunday after Thanksgiving, they cannot possibly be expected to do all of the reading, viewing of their lectures, and assignments all on Sunday.

Not to mention the fact that discussion boards may be penalized if all required posts are made in one day.

A friend I have who also does online education, not through HutchCC, has had the same experience and frustrations.

It makes me curious as to why this is the procedure, and why it is allowed in different schools and universities.

While the cost of online education is lower, the workload is said to be more rigorous, which makes the lack of breaks even more incomprehensible.

Students, online or in-person, should have the same benefits and opportunities that are possible within their arena of learning.

To me, someone who learns better online and prefers online education, views this as a type of punishment.

This conclusion may seem unfair, but online students should be given these breaks as well.

Online education is just as taxing as in-person education, in similar and different ways.

Autumn Yates is a Hutchinson sophomore studying psychology

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