Five days on, two days off. It’s been ingrained into our society for decades. This weekly slog is unenjoyable and tiring, especially for us moody teenagers. I propose that we try something a little different: Weekend Wednesday.
Weekend Wednesday is quite similar to our current system, but rather than having days off on Saturday and Sunday, you would have Wednesday and Sunday off. This essentially splits the work days in two: two days on, one day off, three days on, one day off.
So, what’s the point? Well, to start, there’s energy management. I, among many others, dread Mondays and look forward to Fridays, and it’s not hard to see why. Working for five days straight is no joke, especially at a college prep like Northwest Academy. Class time alone puts students at about 30 hours a week, not including homework or extracurriculars. This can leave students with a workload more similar to a working adult rather than the average teen. From a productivity and recovery standpoint, this is an absolute disaster. You start the first few days of the week strong, but as the days crawl on, you begin to feel unfocused and sluggish. Then, when the weekend finally comes, you crash.
I almost always take my whole Saturday to sleep, lay around and do nothing, just to recover from the week. Then I need a day to do all my homework, and that’s my weekend. Even if you don’t have additional work on the weekend, you basically have to spend a day doing nothing, just to have the energy to do something you actually find enjoyable on Sunday.
Weekend Wednesday is a completely different story. A designated “rest day” in the middle of the week gives you time to sleep in and catch up on any late work, leaving you energetic for the following work day, and then you only have three days until your next break. Regular rest creates a much healthier cycle of work and keeps energy levels consistently higher.
However, no matter how energy-efficient this schedule may be, fear of missing out is a very real downside of Weekend Wednesday. After all, if everyone but you is off on Saturday, it’s hard not to feel left out. However, this offset comes with its own advantage. It’s safe to assume that the entire world won’t magically switch schedules overnight, so you can use Wednesday to take care of activities that would normally prevent you from spending time with other people. In addition, Sunday will still be a universal day off, allowing you to get together with anyone on the current schedule. It’ll be a change to get used to, but I think a healthier, more fulfilling week plan is absolutely worth this sacrifice.
This schedule is more effective and more mentally stabilizing, but above all else I think it’s doable. At a public high school, this change would be nearly impossible to push through, given the bureaucratic nature of an organization like PPS. However, Northwest Academy is in a unique position as an independent school, which makes changes like this easier to implement. On top of that, we can use online school’s flexible nature to make this possible, even if it’s only for a trial week. This experiment could not only break up the monotony of quarantine life, but potentially help the school discover a creative and effective way of doing things. After all, hasn’t Northwest Academy always been about embracing creativity in all its forms? If this idea could work anywhere, it’s here. All we need to do is give it a chance.
