Snow Days

Written by Caroline Shavel
Thursday, 10 February 2011 00:00

I can still remember the excitement that came with the prospect of a snow day back in elementary school. I would sleep with a spoon under my pillow and my pajamas inside out. I would even go as far as to flush an ice cube down the toilet in order to ensure school’s cancellation.

On the morning of a snow day, I would jump out of bed and run to my family’s chalkboard in order to plan a snow day schedule for my brother and me. Activities included playtime in the snow, some sort of board game, and a riveting game of hide and seek. As I write this article and look out the window at the ice storm that has been the cause of the most recent school cancellation, I can’t help but wonder — where did the magic of snow days go?

To start my snow day, I dragged myself out of bed at approximately 12:45 and found my mother eating lunch as I stumbled into the kitchen to prepare myself a frozen waffle.

As an elementary school child, snow days gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted and spend the entire day frolicking in the snow.

While I’d be lying if I said that the announcement of a snow day doesn’t still excite me, snow days for high school students have larger implications.

Any student taking an AP class knows that a snow day means one less day of class before the AP tests in May. Unlike a test proctored by a specific teacher, the AP tests are administered on set dates nationwide, and there is no room for flexibility.

Teachers who teach an AP course have a very strict syllabus set up in order to cover all of the topics on the AP test. So while a snow day is always a welcome treat, every student with an AP course has that date in early May in the back of his mind.

So far this year, Greenwich Public Schools have had four snow days, and it’s only the beginning of February. After the nightmare that was last year’s “Treepocalypse,” where students did not have school for an entire week and finals were pushed back to the last week of June, rumors of an abbreviated April break have been surfacing.

As much as students love the immediate gratification of a day off, being stuck in school at the end of June or losing out on April break are some of the less desirable consequences of snow days.

I may never be able to revert back to the ignorant bliss of the snow days of my adolescence or completely block out the long-term sources of stress that are engrained in my mind, but I still love the feeling of waking up in the morning to a pristine blanket of snow.

Caroline Shavel is a senior at Greenwich High School.