Early Morning Classes

Yay or Nay: Students and Professors Respond

In the aftermath of COVID-19, the St. Lawrence Administration began requiring professors to schedule 30% of class times on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. There’s not enough information yet to judge whether this strategy was successful or not. 

“While personally, I find teaching three days a week works great for lecture classes, it is less useful for discussion-based courses, and virtually impossible -at least for me- to do practice-based or artistic work,” says PCA department chair Angela Sweigart-Gallagher. “However, there are some compelling rationales having to do with campus culture change and classroom availability.”  

On top of that, first-year students often underestimate the early wake-up required for an 8 a.m. class. “I used to have to be up by seven in high school, and now I don’t think I’d take an 8 a.m. again,” says Edie Shaw ’28. The Thursday night party culture on campus is also affected by a Friday morning class. “I definitely have to sacrifice to be able to wake up in time for my class,” says Shaw.  

Other professors argue that students who sign up for an 8 a.m. want to be there. “I find the engagement during Friday classes is normal because the people taking Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes at 8:10 a.m. are there because they want to be,” says Professor In-sil Yoo. She believes that Friday classes are better for students’ health, as they help to spread out their week. Yoo says she enjoys having her workday end early because she is a morning person, but understands others are not.  

Another PCA professor, Sylvia Vue, says, “I think Friday classes are beneficial, but I think the mornings are the problem rather than the day of the week.” So maybe it’s not that classes on Fridays are bad, but rather that morning classes lead to the disengagement of students. 

For the near future, this will continue to be the case for Friday classes. “In the case of PCA 125 and 127, which are both intro-level courses that only have one section, we have elected to have 125 meet two days a week and 127 meet three days a week. We may swap this around in future semesters, but this is where we’ve landed for spring,” says Sweigart-Gallagher. Ultimately, Friday classes will remain present throughout the day, even in the mornings, whether students like it or not.