Ten past eight on a Saturday morning....teenagers everywhere are fast asleep with visions of sugarplums--or whatever--dancing in their heads. Unless, of course, you are here, in which case you're on your way to classes. 



There's no sugar-coating this; Saturday morning classes are not popular. The shock of the harsh reality of Saturday mornings passed months ago. There's a degree of routine to dorms coming to life with showers, the sprint to the dining room or Jake's Market, settling in to a bright classroom with ears barely functioning.



But routine (or resignation) doesn't effect popularity, and no one is saying, "Oh boy, sure glad I have classes this morning!" Perhaps the point is accentuated this Saturday by the elements; we're walking though a thin layer of slush, pelted by cold rain, sleet and freezing rain. It is, in a word, nasty.




Yet we do Saturday morning classes, and we do them for a variety of reasons. At one level, it can be argued that we do not have enough time in the week for the class hours and extracurricular activities we desire. Content-specific courses like United States history or calculus have to weight whole topics for inclusion or exclusion. 

Max tosses a small basketball (upper right) back to his Spanish teacher during a verb conjugation exercise.




Ben's arm span is measured against his height in a Fibonacci application inspired by William Blake's poem Ah! Sunflower.




Then there's the notion that Saturday morning classes keep students focused and productive on Friday evenings, when they might otherwise fall victims to sloth and idle time. This rationale is on the continuum that considers the subtle realities of residential life. We know that boarding schools (usually with higher percentages of day students than Proctor) can reach a tipping point, or threshold at which students seek to vacate campus for weekends. A lack of Saturday activities--classes, athletic contests and a rich set of evening activities and entertainments exacerbate the problem. Eventually, a smaller number of boarders remain on campus Saturday night and Sunday, bored and possibly lonely. 

And so, we offer trips to Five Guys Burgers, a shopping mall, a vampire movie and a go-kart race track. Dodgeball is organized in the gym, and Santa Claus makes a visit to Mike and Betsy's annual holiday gathering/sing-along. We play a full complement of Saturday afternoon athletic contests, and we have Saturday morning classes. 






This weekend, 30 out of Proctor's 257 on-campus boarders signed off for Saturday night "weekends" off campus. That's a little less than 12%. 







Looking at the big picture, they may be justifiable even if unpopular.