By Conor Durkin ‘21

Queue the Jay Pharoah line, something that I cannot write in this family-friendly paper. Just know it goes, “What the actual…” I’m sure you can finish the rest.

I’m so excited, as is almost everyone at Brother Rice. In the words of Bears All-Pro returner Cordarelle Patterson, “It’s been a long time.” I honestly can’t remember our last snow day. During my tenure at BR, we’ve had a couple of cold days and have been jipped on a couple of days where snow levels were reasonably high.

Along with several of my peers, we thought that snow days had fallen victim to the COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone learned how to hold class online.

When asked about the snow day, senior Sean Mahanes said, “In this time of remote learning, the announcement of a snow day was certainly an unexpected but welcomed surprise.”

I thought for sure that Tuesday would be a day of screaming and frustration as my brothers and I tried to log onto our Zooms while the router crashed. Having the whole family use the wifi for Zoom meetings is extremely annoying as I’m sure many of you with siblings in grade school experienced during the two weeks of full elearning.

Not only do we have to worry about our wifi working, but Google Meets with more than 15 people are a completely different ball game. It goes from terrible to brutal. You would think we are working with 19th-century technology. Google has got to figure that out.

With all of the technical problems aside, snow days are the best. Those were the days growing up where you forgot about all of your concerns and just enjoyed the day. You went out and played football and had snowball fights with your friends (good Catholics like us never threw snowballs at inanimate objects).

When senior Dan Wallace was asked what snow days mean to him, he said, “Movies. Hot Chocolate. Sledding”

Four words that perfectly describe a great tradition.

As I said earlier, it’s a nice break.

When asked about the break, senior Kevin O’Connell said, “Having a full day off is a nice break from the stress of hybrid learning. I know all the students could really use this break, especially after those two weeks of full elearning that felt like forever.”

So Mr. Alberts, thank you, we really appreciate it.

Before I leave you guys, I’d like you to read this letter written by the Jefferson County School District superintendent. This guy gets it.