Whether you’re behind on your credit hours, you want to graduate early, or you simply get bored during three-month hiatuses, you always have the option of summer courses available to you.

Unlike the J-term, there are several different configurations of schedules as well. Some will start as soon as the current semester ends, with the first day being May 14. Some wait a few weeks, giving the students a little breather before they have to jump into these quick courses.

Is it worth the stress of these long days? Summer courses don’t span sixteen weeks like our well-paced semesters. Visit MavZone and go to the “Look Up Classes” page. Select Summer, 2018 and check out all the options. There truly are a lot of them, which is really neat…then check out the times. Certain English classes, for example, are four days a week from 8:30-11:30. Twelve hours a week! Yes, that’s per week…for one class!

Maybe, if you’re in the Nursing program, you’d prefer a Monday and Tuesday class that goes from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. This is a more extreme example of the summer “firehose” courses, but none of them allow for much of that hiatus relaxation college students tend to value.

Also, by no means is every single major-related class available over the summer. Not even close. Thankfully, MavZone makes it super easy to check ahead of time.

Now, from a different view that doesn’t appear to bash the idea of summer courses as much…what if you really do need those extra credits? Let’s say a student is finishing up their junior year and still needs 35 credit hours to graduate and let’s say these credit hours are procrastinated electives. Let’s say this student has a job as well, and there’s no way that he can take more than 16 credit hours each semester. There are several useless, but required courses over the summer for this student.

In this particular circumstance, he’d even only half to take one course to catch up enough. Twelve hours a week of one class for four weeks later, that’s three credit hours! After one speed course and one blast in the face by a fire hose, he’s all caught up.

It’s truly a good way to get those extra courses in outside of the traditional semesters…you know, as long as you have a place to live. On-campus housing kicks out all its residents on May 11, the day after final exams are complete. The earliest summer courses start three days later.

At least during J-term, people can arrange to stay in their dorms over winter break, but over the summer, they’re on their own if they want to stick around. Many of the summer courses are online, yet several are exclusively not. This creates quite a predicament if a dorm-reliant student from far away needs to take a specific, exclusively on-campus course.

It turns out there’s a lot of planning that needs to go into the summer course, more-so than the fall or spring.

Also, more of a funny thing than a technical thing, the school still allows students to register for 18 credit hours over the summer, just like they do for the regular semesters. Considering most summer courses are 12 hours a week for a three-credit course, 18 credits would be absolutely brutal. Good luck to whoever is attempting more than six, or nine at the most.

Are summer courses worth it? I suppose, but only if you can’t survive without them.