“TGIM (Thank Goodness It’s Monday),” said no one. For most of us, Monday marks the first day of the work or school week. Both students and teachers groan as they roll out of bed early in the morning, unsatisfied with the mere two days of rest they’ve had over the weekend. Oftentimes, these tired souls wish that school could end one minute earlier…one hour earlier…or even…one day earlier? Yes, that’s right, one day. Currently, there has been much talk of reducing the school week to four days instead of one, meaning that the days of pain will commence starting on Tuesdays instead. However, this seemingly appealing change does not come without its drawbacks; in exchange for one more day of rest, each school day will be extended by two hours. Some are completely fine with the deal, while others are reluctant about staying later in the day. As a result, the idea of a 4-day work week has not been implemented or discarded just yet.

Although a 4-day work week starts 1 day later than the current 5-day work week, by doing the math, one can actually deduce that the amount of time spent in school throughout the 4-day work week is actually about an hour and 36 minutes longer than the time spent during a 5-day work week in California (nces.edu.gov). To lay it out, the average Californian school day is about 6.24 hours long; with a 4-day work week, that school day would be extended by 2 hours. This amounts to 8 hours from the sum of the extra hours of each day, which essentially make up for school time that would have been spent on a Monday and then some. While some would argue that this extra time would defeat the whole purpose of a 4-day work week, others may argue that having the time that would be spent during a Monday spread out amongst the four days is not a big deal.

Personally, looking at the general experience of having Mondays off such as how we have had recently with holidays such as Presidents’ Day, I enjoy having an extra full day completely off from school (especially since Monday is adjacent to the weekend and extends it when a holiday). I think that it would be nice to have even one more day to refresh from the stresses of the week, and that two extra hours per each school day would not seem significant in the long run. Similarly, Ziqi (Maggie) Wang (9) says that she would prefer a 4-day weekend, as she would “have 24 extra hours of the weekend” and “[she] is totally fine with a 5 o’clock school ending” (due to how the extra 2 hours would affect the time our school currently finishes the day) because she has experienced 5 o’clock school endings before. My only concern—that I think many other student athletes and students who do extracurriculars can relate to—would be how those two extra hours might affect my extracurriculars and ability to do homework. Often, many students already do not get home later due to extracurriculars, and struggle to get their homework done in a timely manner (not to mention the fact that they are especially exhausted from all of the day’s activities). Even so, I am more curious as to how a 4-day work week would actually feel first-hand, and am open to at least trying it out.

As shown by the discussions exemplified above, a 4-day work week is still open to debate and comes with its own pros and cons. Perhaps, schools and students will come to a collective decision to implement the system, or the education system might experiment with it to see if it provides any benefits to students.