Anushka K.C.
Staff Writer
With finals only a week away, students can be seen huddling inside libraries, sitting on the quad or forming groups inside the Trojan Center studying.
Professors are busy scheduling and preparing questions for exams. Everyone is mustering the last bits of motivation they have for the year so that they can spend the long summer break with the plans they have made.
“I want to try to jump out of an airplane,” said Kourtney McCoy, a freshman elementary education major from Tuscaloosa, who shared her plans for the summer.
McCoy will also be working two jobs over the break since she plans to live in an apartment next fall. She said she wants “to make a lot more money.”
“I will also definitely spend a lot more time with my family because I really miss seeing them,” she said.
There are many students in Troy like McCoy who have come from distant cities and do not have the leisure to see their families every day.
In contrast, international students, who cannot visit their countries because of expensive airline tickets, make do with having different plans for the summer.
Xinxia Li, a freshman accounting major from Lanzhou, China, said she would take summer classes in order to graduate faster, mentioning that she would still miss her family.
Li said she especially misses local Chinese food and karaoke, which is a popular activity among young adults in China.
Summer breaks are also quite different there; they are only 40 days, compared to nearly 90 days for Troy students.
“I used to go to a shopping mall called Wanda in Tianshui Road,” she said. “There are many restaurants, foreign brands and cinemas over there, so I like it there.”
For Heidi Beattie, assistant professor of psychology, a third of her summer is going to be similar to her everyday routine of teaching classes.
“I am planning on teaching summer courses here at Troy,” Beattie said — “a couple of developmental psychology courses as well as general psychology courses.”
Beattie is also planning to continue a research project she has been working on. She had started looking at the effects of a yoga intervention on young children’s attention.
“I took videos of the children participating on the intervention, and I would like to do an additional observation analysis from those videos to get that research ready for submission and for publication as well.”
Hailing from Nebraska, she also hopes to go on a couple of weekend trips with her husband, spend time with her dogs, visit her family back home and see her sister, who is expecting to have a baby in June.
Similarly, Joseph Arnold, an adjunct history instructor, wants to spend time with his two daughters.
“They are growing up quickly, and I know that the time that myself and their mom are going to spend with them is going to be diminishing,” Arnold said.
“As they get older, they are going to be involved in more things, and it’s not going to be that long before they go to university as well,” he continued. “So, we have to take advantage of that time while we can.”
Arnold, blind, also looks forward to training in Palmetto, Florida, to receive his first guide dog.
“It would come to class, and instead of using the cane, I would use the dog then.”
As it looks, summer break has become the time to be with families, get a job to earn money for future expenses and do activities that are impossible to do with a daily school routine.
Consequently, it is also a time to sit back and relax.
“I think I will be watching some dramas and catch up on some sleep as well,” Xinxia said.
