By Peter McShane ‘23

Being almost done with four years of high school, there has been one thing I’ve noticed more than anything.

“I just got to get to Friday.”

“Couple more days until Friday.”

“Can’t wait for Friday.”

“I wish it was Friday already.”

The list goes on and on about students talking about how they just wish it was Friday, so this had me thinking: is there a way to fix this? After lots of time of thinking about this throughout my high school years, there has been one solution that comes to my mind, which is schools having every Wednesday off.

Ryan Manfre ‘25 had a very strong take about this idea.

Manfre said, “Uh, I think we need a break so we can refresh our brains, and also, there is more in life than just school too. I think school is very important, but it isn’t my life and there is more to life than just school; so, having Wednesday off can help us enjoy a little more of the life we want to live.”

Benjamin Gadison ‘23 said, “I think this would be a benefit for every school for multiple reasons. First, everyone loves when there’s that sense of energy around the building on those Friday days, so having that twice a week would be awesome. Taking every Wednesday off would also allow schools to make classes less of a rush by making them longer on those four other days.”

Gadison brought up a great point about how it would be good to have that sense of energy around the building twice a week. I think students would also not be dragging themselves about going to school on Monday as much if they knew they were going to have Wednesday off, too.

Julian Gamboa ‘24 said, “I think having Wednesday off is a great idea, but it can disrupt the flow of school. Monday is a slow day as kids are coming off the weekend, and Tuesday brings back that groove of school and gets things going. Having Wednesday off creates a disruption in that flow, causing Thursday to be another Monday. That may prohibit class work and improvement as kids are dreading having to come back again. Also, Friday will always be looked forward to because the weekend is just that – the end of the week. My recommendation is a late start/early leave, which we would already have on Thursday. Also, class time is long enough and maybe even too long, increasing it wouldn’t do any good since kids’ attention spans are already very low.”

Julian’s idea about the day off disrupting the flow of the school week really was a good point on why this day off wouldn’t work.

With all these great ideas about taking Wednesday’s off at school, I think schools should at least test it out to see if the expected benefits truly work.