[Brian Maher]

Originally Posted by jgerstein

As much as I enjoy the rest day after a Thursday/Friday/Saturday competition, I went with Friday/Saturday/Sunday.

Unfortunately, while each individual competition is not a big deal, the missed days add up and all happen very close to each other. Missing five days over the course of the year is inconvenient but can be dealt with, but missing five days over the course of three weeks right before AP tests for DCMP and CMP definitely caused some concern at my school this year. If I were pulling my students out of school for two or three Fridays (and potentially Thursday if we travel to an event) in the six weeks before that, we'd be pushing the limits of what our students, parents, teachers, and administration would accept.

This comment sums up my views when I was a student pretty well, considering I was one of jgerstein's students.

1257's school is a challenging all-honors/AP school. With the block schedule system they use, missing a day of school meant missing an hour and a half in each of four rather difficult classes. On top of the baseline onslaught of homework, it was a hassle to catch up, and when AP classes with AP exams mere weeks away are thrown into the mix, missed days become a real PITA. My senior year, a TFS event could have easily cost me four or five hours of AP class time.

FSS events help keep students sane, especially ones with a challenging courseload. I am very glad MAR ran FSS events my senior year and that MARCMP fell during my spring break.

Originally Posted by NorthernTaco

As a college student, I am 100% in favor of Friday-Sunday events, primarily because my GPA cannot afford to miss the extra day of class. While a rest day on Sunday can be nice, I much prefer to suck it up on Monday and not get behind on class material or lower my grade by missing a mandatory class, and I feel like most college student volunteers can agree with that.

Last semester, I was fortunate to only have two hours of class on Fridays. If I had the schedule I have this upcoming semester, I would have missed a total of 21 hours of class due to events (7 hours of class on Fridays, and three TFS events). As a conscientious student who hates missing class and having to play catch-up, I would much rather have the choice of skipping all/some/no classes on Monday than be forced to skip all of them on Friday.