Is it just me, or was J-term a complete waste of time for most of you?

When Harvard first announced that it had changed its calendar to make room for a month-long winter break, I rejoiced. A whole month? Of doing like, nothing? That’s heaven. No longer would we envy our friends at state schools and other schools who had a nice three weeks of winter vacay because we got a whopping four and a half.

J-term, at least for me, promised to be a time of uber productivity, filled with internship applications, course shopping, career pondering, book reading (for pleasure), on top of seeing friends and family. Did it prove to be productive? Not really. This graph painfully but accurately describes my month of January:

Yeah. Something like that. Needless to say, filling out Dean Hammond’s survey which was sent out to the entire student body in order to evaluate time spent during J-term, was pretty simple for me. What did I do during the break? I…relaxed. Check. Saw friends. Check. Kindofsortof thought about internships. Check. Annnd yeah…I think that’s about it. The other options made me feel pretty worthless (volunteer positions? internship? what?).

So what was the problem? One solution that I put forth in my 500-word-ish-long spiel in the survey was obviously to provide students with more options for staying on campus during J-term. I mean, as much as I love my family, staying with them for 4.5 weeks is just begging for someone’s blood pressure to skyrocket. Plus, who doesn’t enjoy frolicking about in a kind of empty campus? Spending J-term on campus with more student-led programming or offering quirky not-for-credit classes would be a fantastic option for students. See MIT’s Independent Activities Period, which is a program that has been successfully running for four decades! MIT students are given the option to take either for-credit or not-for-credit activities during the month of January. You can take a “Art and Architecture Tour of the Boston Public Library” or attend the “32nd Annual Science Fiction Marathon” or take an introductory language course in Japanese. Such diverse programming without the pressure of grades or credit would give students a truly relaxing yet intellectually stimulating winter break. It would definitely be a nice change from the unfortunate amounts of Hulu and junk food I consumed over J-term.

What do you think? Was J-term fruitful for you? What suggestions do you have?