Most Marquette students are familiar with the concept of “reading week” before final exams: one glorious week to catch up on coursework, finish up writing term papers and generally waste time one should have been using to do the former two.

Marquette doesn’t have a reading week, but many schools familiar to its students, like Northwestern University, do. Because students in the American system are expected to keep up with their schoolwork at all times, such weeks are more of a gift of time to study for exams than anything else.

In the British system, however, reading weeks are granted fully or not at all. They are determined by department, and are not an excuse to hit the bars six days in a row. (Granted, students here usually go to pubs or clubs about six days a week anyway because the concept of daily homework doesn’t exist.)

Reading week is a mid-term break for students to actually read and write coursework essays, perhaps from home if they decide to leave.

Having an entire week dedicated to “catching up” on reading was baffling at first, since I don’t think my courses assign much reading to begin with. Sure, we may have anywhere from 50 to 200 pages to read per week for any given course, but there’s no other work until the end of term unless a presentation or coursework essay is assigned.

Now that I’m in the middle of reading week, I understand its appeal. Going to class for two hours a day can be a bit intrusive when it takes just as long to walk there and back as it does to sit in class. Having time is more the focus of reading week, and students can choose to spend it how they wish.

Because I don’t have any major projects due this week, I decided to spend the first and second weekends of my reading week traveling to Caen, France and Brussels/Brugge, Belgium.

I took the opportunity to learn about different cultures instead of learn from my books (although I still took some time to work on my essays), and I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my “spring break”.

I may not have been in Cabo or the Dominican Republic like most college students for spring break (and it’s hardly even spring), but taking time to relax and travel is just what I needed to be rejuvenated for the second half of my term.

Experiencing reading week now, it seems like a shame that we don’t have anything similar at Marquette, or really anywhere in the U.S. Having such a long break mid-term (instead of right before finals) makes a lot of sense when you think about it. It forces students to pull themselves together before cramming at the end of term while also provided some much-deserved time off from class.

In this one aspect, U.S. schools could take a leaf from British books and instate a real, mid-term reading week. Since it’s not a “spring break,” students are less likely to jet off to Panama City, and more likely to be less stressed.