Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“Scrambling” to find train tickets, driving hours and hours, paying $200+, etc. just so your kid can get home a day or a few hours earlier than planned is really strange to me.

I clearly said "later dates", as in Tuesday, Nov. 20th. Train tickets were purchased a month ago (you have to do that for major holidays just in case you don't know what you are talking about which is readily apparent) for the 20th with a return on the 25th. Well, one, two, three and then FOUR professors cancelled classes this week so suddenly junior is ready to come home on Friday the 16th (because one prof took until the 16th to decide to cancel the class on the 20th). None of this correlates with the university calendar which says last class dates are Tuesday, the 20th. So YES we had previously purchased tickets according to univ. calendar and yes we had to scramble because all of the trains were books for the 16th, 17th, 19th, etc. etc. so we had to eat the previously purchased tickets (nonrefundable) and yes we had to drive down and pick up DC and drive back so we could have a whole week with DC - who ACTUALLY wants to still spend time with his family so was thrilled that classes were cancelled. What about that do you not understand?

Hey PP. I'm with ya (this is OP). My kid likes his family and high school friends, too. It was frustrating to go through the effort to respect the schedule for no apparent reason.

+1. We're with you too. I'm thrilled that that DS wanted to come home five days early and be with us, but everything was settled for him to train back (even buses weren't available back around 6 weeks ago when we booked - Greyhound was booked up so we opted for train). As each professor announced no class for the week of the 18th we thought "great, but what about the ticket for the 20th" and then when the last professor announced, DS was ready to leave on Friday the 16th. And by then nothing was available via bus, train, plane, even friends (most of home drove the minute their own classes were cancelled).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“Scrambling” to find train tickets, driving hours and hours, paying $200+, etc. just so your kid can get home a day or a few hours earlier than planned is really strange to me.

I clearly said "later dates", as in Tuesday, Nov. 20th. Train tickets were purchased a month ago (you have to do that for major holidays just in case you don't know what you are talking about which is readily apparent) for the 20th with a return on the 25th. Well, one, two, three and then FOUR professors cancelled classes this week so suddenly junior is ready to come home on Friday the 16th (because one prof took until the 16th to decide to cancel the class on the 20th). None of this correlates with the university calendar which says last class dates are Tuesday, the 20th. So YES we had previously purchased tickets according to univ. calendar and yes we had to scramble because all of the trains were books for the 16th, 17th, 19th, etc. etc. so we had to eat the previously purchased tickets (nonrefundable) and yes we had to drive down and pick up DC and drive back so we could have a whole week with DC - who ACTUALLY wants to still spend time with his family so was thrilled that classes were cancelled. What about that do you not understand?

Hey PP. I'm with ya (this is OP). My kid likes his family and high school friends, too. It was frustrating to go through the effort to respect the schedule for no apparent reason.

^^ and I'm not OP. I'm just agreeing with OP. We had all the train transportation settled according to the the university calendar but were receiving daily reports from DC as each prof. canceled each class, one-by-one. When the fourth prof declared no classes this week, we were looking at alternative bus schedules (all booked); plane (all booked) and train (all booked). Yes, I'm grateful that DC still wants to spend a week with family but if we had known that DC would have more than a week off, we would have made different train plans.

Anonymous wrote:“Scrambling” to find train tickets, driving hours and hours, paying $200+, etc. just so your kid can get home a day or a few hours earlier than planned is really strange to me.

I clearly said "later dates", as in Tuesday, Nov. 20th. Train tickets were purchased a month ago (you have to do that for major holidays just in case you don't know what you are talking about which is readily apparent) for the 20th with a return on the 25th. Well, one, two, three and then FOUR professors cancelled classes this week so suddenly junior is ready to come home on Friday the 16th (because one prof took until the 16th to decide to cancel the class on the 20th). None of this correlates with the university calendar which says last class dates are Tuesday, the 20th. So YES we had previously purchased tickets according to univ. calendar and yes we had to scramble because all of the trains were books for the 16th, 17th, 19th, etc. etc. so we had to eat the previously purchased tickets (nonrefundable) and yes we had to drive down and pick up DC and drive back so we could have a whole week with DC - who ACTUALLY wants to still spend time with his family so was thrilled that classes were cancelled. What about that do you not understand?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband is a professor at UMd. Teachervone vlass this semester that is on Tues and Thurs evenings at 7.

He planned on teaching but university shut down dorms at 7 pm. Rather than asking kids to bring luggage etc to class, and try to leave from there at 830, he cancelled.

They shut down the dorms for Thanksgiving and kicked everyone out? Is every student there within driving distance?

I was wondering the same thing. Do the colleges actually kick the kids out for a 4 day weekend?

My college kept dorms open for Thanksgiving and Easter, but there was no meal service. This sucked if you had no family to go home to or you lived too far away/lacked the funds to travel. Res Life always made sure international students were hosted by local students or professors, but as a poor kid, I had to smuggle food out every year before Good Friday.

These days, Uber Eats and other delivery services are shuttling food to college dorms every day. No one is up a creek without food over a break anymore.

Wow. I usually find it annoying when people say this, but "Check your privilege."

I wish my life was so easy that it would even occur to me to be bothered by something like this.

Anonymous wrote:It is lazy. Don't act like your son is not doing it at all for his convenience.

I am a professor. I am paid with the expectation that I hold all of my lectures. Parents are changed tuition with the same expectation. When other faculty members cancel their classes the students start pressuring you like you are some scrooge hold out. Of course, if you cancel a lecture, you are not covering material that you thought was important when you planned the class.

+1

It is completely lazy that the universities have turned a one-day holiday into a week away from school. And these are cancelled (as opposed to rescheduled, which is what I always did with the high holidays, and yes, sometimes that meant holding the lecture twice so that all had a chance to attend.)

Anonymous wrote:My son is a college professor. He cancelled classes the day before the break. Nothing at the school shut down. Dorms are open. Cafeteria is open. It just gives the kids that are traveling more time to prepare. How exactly is this a big deal?

Hi. I'm the OP. I didn't make it into the enormous deal that some of the other folks did. The one point is that if you cancel last minute, you don't give the out-of-town kids the opportunity to take advantage. FYI, at my son's school, meal service closed the day before my son left town. He left as soon as he would have been able to leave had his classes hadn't been cancelled.

No, when we bought the ticket and he still had class, my son didn't think twice about where his first obligation lay - even though all the rest of the family, including his beloved cousins, were here in the DMV. Cancelling later wasn't helpful to us because even though it would have been fun to expand the time with his cousins, we couldn't afford a new ticket. Having his cousins visit - that's a big deal for us.

So he stayed in an empty dorm and did not have access to board. No, not a tragedy, but a disappointment.

Maybe your son's school still feeds the kids who remain (although I question why this would ever come up in a conversation with mom), but not all kids go to that school. For those of limited means, this is a big deal. If you can't see that, I can't help you.

Anonymous wrote:If I’m paying for the class, then hold the damn class. Crazy that professors can unilaterally change the terms of the purchased class. I want a partial refund.

LMAO you cannot be serious.

+1

If I’m paying for the class, then hold the damn class. Crazy that professors can unilaterally change the terms of the purchased class. I want a partial refund.

It is lazy. Don't act like your son is not doing it at all for his convenience.

I am a professor. I am paid with the expectation that I hold all of my lectures. Parents are changed tuition with the same expectation. When other faculty members cancel their classes the students start pressuring you like you are some scrooge hold out. Of course, if you cancel a lecture, you are not covering material that you thought was important when you planned the class.

My son is a college professor. He cancelled classes the day before the break. Nothing at the school shut down. Dorms are open. Cafeteria is open. It just gives the kids that are traveling more time to prepare. How exactly is this a big deal?

Anonymous wrote:My child goes to a small school in PA, and they shut down the one dining hall down entirely over break.

Go ahead and don't believe me if you think I need to provide proof. But you have to ask yourself, why would I spend my Saturday lying to you about that on DCUM?

My DCs college also shut down. The sports teams who had to come back early over thanksgiving had to eat at restaurants. My college for sure shut down back in the day. It was a trimester school and it shut dorms a dining halls after lunch on Wednesday and reopened in January.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband is a professor at UMd. Teachervone vlass this semester that is on Tues and Thurs evenings at 7.

He planned on teaching but university shut down dorms at 7 pm. Rather than asking kids to bring luggage etc to class, and try to leave from there at 830, he cancelled.

They shut down the dorms for Thanksgiving and kicked everyone out? Is every student there within driving distance?

I was wondering the same thing. Do the colleges actually kick the kids out for a 4 day weekend?

My college kept dorms open for Thanksgiving and Easter, but there was no meal service. This sucked if you had no family to go home to or you lived too far away/lacked the funds to travel. Res Life always made sure international students were hosted by local students or professors, but as a poor kid, I had to smuggle food out every year before Good Friday.

These days, Uber Eats and other delivery services are shuttling food to college dorms every day. No one is up a creek without food over a break anymore.

Are you intentionally obtuse? She said she was a poor college student - who had no money to go home, let alone eat out for every meal. Many poor kids have meals exclusively through the meal plans covered by a scholarship. There is very little extra money for discretionary spending.