When I was deciding on whether or not I should go to Augustana, one of my biggest hesitations was that Augustana followed a trimester schedule. Now that I’ve been here almost a year and a half, I find the trimester schedule to be somewhat lacking.
Semesters and trimesters are essentially the same except that trimesters seem to go by quicker. Trimester courses throw more material at you faster, but we take fewer courses at a time than colleges that follow semesters.
What I find lacking is how Augustana currently schedules breaks. As it stands, we have a break between each term, two breaks in winter term (Thanksgiving and Christmas) and a short Easter break in spring term.
It seems that Augustana is trying to line up our breaks with other semester colleges while simultaneously providing students  with a slight breather at the end of each term. This approach seems to be the logical way to proceed on paper, but in practice, it doesn’t work so well.
The current schedule provides unnecessary breaks between each term and makes winter term very choppy and awkward. We should be able to get through a school year a little bit quicker than other colleges. These breaks force us to end either at the same time or later than semester colleges.
I see two possible solutions; the first of which is that we start school later allowing us to combine fall, Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks and the rest of the year proceeds normally with winter term starting in January.
The problem with that is the school year would end sometime in June, and no one wants to be in class that late.
The second, more efficient, solution would be to start school earlier, skip fall break, Thanksgiving break essentially stays the same, Christmas break is shortened from December 20th to January 2nd and forgo spring break. This still breaks up winter term, but if we start early enough Christmas break could be a short break right before finals, and that would be a less choppy division.
The major benefit to this second solution is that summer break not only comes earlier, but it would be quite a bit longer. It feels easier to go through a school year all at once rather than drag it out with multiple breaks.
If Augustana is still intent on trimesters it should adopt a more year-round school calendar.