Assignment deadlines on Sunday at 8 p.m. are inconvenient, inefficient, and ineffective deadlines for students to complete their work during the pandemic.

 While this new deadline revision is better for the wide variety of student schedules during the pandemic compared to the normal deadlines, there is still room for improvement. Having the deadline at the end of the weekend is helpful in some regards, giving plenty of time for a student who might be busy during the week or part of the weekend. Also, an argument could be made that hybrid and online models provide more time for students to complete this work. However, there are still a multitude of problems that overshadow this.

For a student who has a job or is engaged in lots of extracurriculars, especially on weekends, the Sunday 8 p.m. deadline would be a hassle. Around 30 percent of high school students have jobs and even more are engaged in extracurriculars. All this can add up and can lead to much unnecessary stress. This deadline punishes students who are engaging in critical and beneficial activities, many of which could possibly help on a college application.

While students are at home more due to the pandemic, this added time at home is effectively canceled out. Especially for students in higher level classes, learning doesn’t stop on off-days. Students still have to catch up on missed learning or might even have to zoom into these classes. Students are essentially still doing school work during the days that they are home, roughly equivalent to the amount of time they would be in school.

For students who are completing their work relatively last minute, which according to many surveys and studies is the vast majority of students, if they have to ask a teacher for help, they essentially have no hope. If the deadline was moved just one day, students who have work to complete on the last day have a higher chance of contacting their teacher if they reach out during the week, which this new deadline would give students the ability to do.

Students who believe this new deadline would benefit them should spread the word and could ask their teachers to create a custom deadline, like some teachers are already doing. Students can even email their administrators such as principles and the superintendent asking them to consider the idea.