By Elizabeth Tertadian
This year's winter break could look something like this: Ticket home: $1,100. Time spent traveling home: 4 days. Time to shop for the perfect gifts: 2 days. Time spent with friends and family: 2 weeks. Trying to fit everything in over winter break: Impossible.
This year students will notice winter break is a week shorter than in years past. Scheduled from Dec. 19 to Jan. 11, three weeks are carved out for the first semester's break this year.
The shortened holiday is due to a hiccup in the academic calendar. Somewhat like leap year, every five years the academic calendar falls in such a way that winter break is only three weeks long.
"It's all in the stars," joked Provost Br. Donald Stabrowski, C.S.C.
According to Stabrowski, the academic calendar for each year is decided early, and is in place for the next 20 years.
"This is merely the five-year cycle that happens regularly," he said.
The cycle is due to many small changes that ultimately add up to a week missing from winter break. Among them is graduation, scheduled for the first Sunday in May.
To make that happen, administrators had two choices: Start the fall semester earlier or shorten winter break. They decided a shorter winter break was better than starting the school year earlier.
"We would have started class on Aug. 24 instead to make-up," said Stabrowski, "and that would have been terrible."
However, a shortened winter break also affects students, whether they live a thousand miles away or right down the street. The fact that winter break is significantly shorter shocked sophomore Ruby Stocking.
"Can we protest?" she asked.
Her holiday break is typically spent travelling a bit, and then going home to Ashland, Ore. This year, she hoped to travel to India during break.
"Apparently, I'm not going to India anymore," she said after discovering the schedule.
Stocking said she would prefer having a full month off and an extra week of class at the end of the year rather than sacrifice her holiday time.
Freshman Roger Kuan agrees.
"Having a month, gives us time to go out, and enjoy quality time with friends and family," Kuan said, "When we get out of break, we'll be headed back to our dorms with the eyebrows on our textbooks, and the stress of college deadlines."
Some students don't mind the shortened break.
"This year I'm not really upset because all my friends are here," said sophomore Katie Kroger. "But last year I would have been really upset because I had more friends at home."
It may be easy for local students to change their plans, but international students face a more difficult problem: the decision to go home or not.
From Australia, freshman Valeska Hoath is one of the many international students who are faced with the decision of what to do this winter break.
"I will be going home this year, but if the break was always only three weeks I may only go home in the summer time," she said.
For Hoath, it takes a total of about four days to fly home and back. This leaves her with a little more than two weeks with her family, not factoring in the time difference and jet lag which takes an additional couple of days of adjustment.
In these tighter economic times, a short holiday break has some students questioning if a plane ticket is worth it, especially if they live far away. According to UP's Web site, 5 percent of UP students are international.
However, that statistic does not include students from Hawaii, other distant states or Guam. According to expedia.com, these students will spend around $1,100 -$2,000 round trip to get home for the holidays.
Despite the hassle it may be to travel home, many students will still travel home this break. Their only consolation may be that next year's winter break will be, once again, four weeks long.
