Students may soon find themselves in a dilemma: having schoolwork to do over Spring Break.

“Obviously I don’t like it when teachers assign something over Spring Break,” said freshman psychology major David Gerbie. “It defeats the purpose of having a break when you still need to do work over it.”

Senior communications major Lauren Westra has a midterm to do when she returns, but feels the same as Gerbie.

“That’s our time to have a break, so teachers should give us a break and not have us do work,” she said.

Steve Berg, an instructor in Public Affairs and political science, said he assigned a take-home essay test that’s due after break but said he usually allows some time before and after break for assigned work.

“I don’t really expect people to be out on a beach in Fort Lauderdale, with a laptop and a pina colada working on my paper,” Berg said. “Having been a student for many years, I know the mind set pretty well, and I viewed it as vacation.”

Berg said he gave students an essay test over break to allow them to think about the material, so when they return it won’t be as hard to remember. He also said he didn’t want to make it too difficult, because some students have demanding work to do over break.

“I have some students who are working on a Habitat for Humanity project, and they won’t have time to work,” Berg said. “What they’re doing is very worthwhile.”

German instructor Friedemann Stuebing said he assigned a “first draft of a 150-word imaginary travel report” in his 201 class and a midterm in both sections of his 202 class all for the Monday after Spring Break.

“It’s not that I do that intentionally; I would rather have the midterm before Spring Break, but it just wasn’t possible,” Stuebing said. “When you have a Spring Break as a student, you would like to have some time off. I submit to the reality of a limited amount of time.”

Stuebing said in the past he “rarely” assigned homework over Spring Break, but this year, “Wat mut, dat mut,” which is northern German dialect for, “What needs to be done needs to be done.” Stuebing also said that some students may use it advantageously to get work done, and he’s going to use the time to catch up on some work.

“I don’t want to throw a wrench in anybody’s travel plans or joy of having a break,” Stuebing said. “I hope those students who need it understand that they need to set aside a little time to study.”

Gerbie said he typically doesn’t do work over Spring Break, but he wants to protect his GPA.

“I’m a freshman. I can’t really afford to not do work over Spring Break,” he said. “I just want to keep my freshman grades up.”