New mid-week start to classes brings irritation and ambivalence from students 

Hundreds of vehicles flooded into Oakland this past weekend as Pitt students prepared to start the spring semester, which began on a Wednesday rather than a Monday for the first time in seven years.

Pitt has implemented a new academic schedule for the 2024-2025 school year with classes and finals beginning on a Wednesday. Some students said this change has brought about frustrations as they adapt to the new schedule.

The first day of the spring semester has started on a Monday since 2017, while Pitt’s finals schedule has been Monday-Friday since at least 2009. This same mid-week finals schedule that was implemented this past fall will also be used for the spring semester, although it will have an added “reading day” on Wednesday to give students a day break between the end of classes and finals starting. The current 2025-2026 academic calendar has the same mid-week schedule of finals for both fall and spring semesters, although these dates are still subject to change. 

Malik Yasin, a senior psychology and neuroscience major, said she works as a TA and part-time in a lab. With classes starting on Wednesday, Yasin said that this messes up the flow of her week.

“I usually use the first week of classes to get used to things and having it start in the middle of the week kind of throws it off,” Yasin said. “It does affect me, especially with my other commitments … I don’t really get used to it until next Friday instead of the Friday of the first week.”

Jillian Noel, a senior chemical engineering major, had similar feelings about the change. Noel said the way classes are arranged can make this new way harder, since, during the first week, students will miss any classes that are only scheduled for Monday or Tuesday.

“There’s classes that only happen on Tuesday or only Friday. There’s weird schedules. And at this point, I’m still unsure of which classes I’m having,” Noel said. “I want to get used to my schedule and I can’t because we’re not starting with the usual schedule that the rest of semester is gonna follow.”

Maddie Frankos, a sophomore nursing major, felt that the new schedule made the second week of classes more confusing because it won’t follow the same pattern of the first week.

“I don’t like it,” Frankos said. “I’m a nursing major and all of our classes are blocked on Monday, so we don’t really have that many classes this week anyways, which is weird.”

Chloe Griggs, a sophomore nursing major, said the Wednesday start impacted her travel plans. Griggs said since both of her parents work during the week, one was forced to take off work to accommodate the change and get her back to campus on time.

“It seems like we might as well have just started on a Monday and they could have brought me back over the weekend,” Griggs said.

Not all Pitt students seem to mind the modification. Adam Douich, a senior rehabilitation science major, said he didn’t have that strong of an opinion on the change.

“It was definitely a little weird this year seeing that we started on a Wednesday, but I don’t think it affects us as much as the faculty because they kinda have to restructure the whole syllabus schedule,” Douich said.

Lauren Haertter, a junior natural science major, said she also didn’t mind the change because it gives students fewer days of school before reaching the first weekend.

“It’s weird, but it’s manageable,” Haertter said. “I might prefer it to be in the middle of the week because now you have the weekend after three days.”

Students spoke about being more frustrated by the new finals schedule after getting the chance to experience it in the fall semester.

Frankos said she hated the new schedule and would “much rather go back to the old one.”

“My only final during finals week was that Wednesday, and we had class for that class the day before on the Tuesday. So it was terrible,” Frankos said. “It was really bad.”

Bronx Bailey, a sophomore natural science major, said he disliked the finals plan because it feels like two weeks of finals rather than one. 

“It’s so inconvenient if you have a final on Tuesday, and that means you’re stuck here for so much longer instead of having it be an entire week and then you’re done,” Bailey said. “I had moments where I did enjoy being on campus when most of the other students weren’t here, but I feel like it’s just so inconvenient … especially this upcoming semester with trying to move out and everything.”

Douich also had strong feelings regarding the change, saying that the new schedule was “awful.”

“That was so unnecessary, because it put students in such a wide range gap in terms of when they were taking their finals,” Douich said. “And a lot of people were forced to stay at school longer than others, and it just made it unnecessarily longer. So that was terrible.”