Ah, snow days! How great they were back in high school, how much better they are in college! Loyola has racked up a total of five delays and cancellations since beginning the second semester. As we approach spring break, many students begin to ask, will there even be a spring? The forecast for the next few weeks is grim in that regard, with storms rolling in yet again. At this point, would more snow days really be a good thing for the student body?

My answer is a firm “no.” It has gotten to the point where Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes are behind by almost two weeks; students simply are not receiving enough class time. Though this sounds appealing at first, one must remember that each of these classes cost money. In fact, one could do the math and figure out that we have lost a couple thousand dollars or so in just the past month. Everyone loves a few, well-deserved days off. But now that teachers are struggling to cover all of the necessary material for exams, more and more independent work is being loaded onto us.

With boatloads of time to pass and slack off, I find myself falling into the same basic routine. Waking up unnecessarily late, not actually getting out of bed until about an hour after waking up unnecessarily late, then getting ready for the day. With a nice 4:30 p.m. coming around the corner, I eat and converse in Boulder. Being a procrastinator, I avoid heaps of work by means of FIFA, then attempt real work at 11 PM.

Assuring myself that school is not real, I usually put off as much work as I can until the break time in between classes. This cycle inevitably repeats itself as we are blessed with yet another day off, and sooner or later it might break with a day of actual school.

Now, being creatures of habit, we can understand the problem at hand. If we’re all as lazy as I am, we’re bound to fall into this spell of food, FIFA and jabbering uselessly until we hear that there’s another snow day, then repeating the cycle we swear we are not going to do again.
Being from the Boston area, I have dealt with dozens of days where we’d have anywhere from two to three feet of snow on the ground and, if we were lucky enough, we’d be granted a cautious one-hour delay. Here on the other hand, I feel everyone loses their minds over only a couple of inches of snow that consistently cancels morning classes. These snow days are laughable. Though I understand the problems that flash freezing can cause, applying more salt to the slippery pavements is an easy remedy. Or just sending out the workers right when the snow hits to shovel the light snow. That works too. I’m no scientist but I heard that works.

I’m curious as to how the rest of this semester carries out. I don’t see the need of any more snow days, nor do I think I really want any. I believe weekends are enough to relax as it is, and this four-day weekend ended up with me being lazy and barely completing any work.

All of the storms have lead to some great conversation and a snowball war on Hillside that will definitely remain one of my favorite nights of college. Being an impartial Campion observer, I believe Butler won after the Hammerman blitzkrieg failed. I feel bad for the poor campus police officer that could do nothing but watch as eighty-something freshman pelted each other with snowballs.

But in all seriousness, this is just getting ridiculous. Loyola should probably stop cancelling school before snowball artillery becomes a regular thing. And let’s stop this disease known as “snow daze” before it can really infect the population with straight up laziness and we forget how to read and write.