As the sun emerged from behind the clouds and temperatures stayed high for the first time since last year, students were relieved by the chance to spend Midterm Break in the great outdoors—all 30 minutes of it.
“I really needed this time to de-compress,” said Anita Brayke ’27. “Even though it’s only 10 weeks long, a Carleton term takes it out of you, so it’s important to take the opportunities that you get to chill out and focus on non-school things. I wasn’t able to read a book in the free time that I had, but I did manage to walk to the public library and look at the shelves! I was a little late getting back to campus, though.”
First-years were particularly grateful for this break as they are still acclimating to the imbalance in break schedules.
“We got six whole weeks for winter but only two for spring? I just don’t understand,” said Noem Sence ’29, “how are we supposed to do another 10 weeks of college, especially when all my friends back home are done with school by now? But, you know, thankfully we got this extra half hour over the weekend.”
Not all students, however, took advantage of Midterm Break in the same way. Several spent the weekend “locked in” at local coffee shops, like Little Joy and Goodbye Blue Monday — in that order as things became more dire.
“I’m glad that Blue Monday has extended their hours until 8:00 p.m. because now I can pull, like, 10-hour sessions there,” said Sue Sleapie ’28. “And with the extra time, I was able to get my work for Thursday and Friday’s classes done!”
Sleapie admitted that this level of work was relatively low because she was not assigned extra assignments to ‘make up for the break,’ like some of her friends were.
“I thought that we’d all be sleeping in until 9:00 a.m., but a lot of my friends actually had essays due at noon on Saturday that had to be physically turned in at a dropbox at the end of a large hedge maze,” continued Sleapie. “Yeah, and they had to do this whole scavenger hunt and everything to find Leighton 505, which really cut into our LDC brunch plans.”
Seniors, on the other hand, largely reported enjoying a very relaxing break.
“When I was a freshman, Midterm Break was only 10 minutes long. But with everything that I don’t have going on, I was able to fit in an entire hiking trip, and the time pressure helped me PR my 5K walk,” said Chuck Tout ’26. “Those extra 20 minutes made a big difference.”
