Attending Drexel University, we pride ourselves on our co-op program. About 99% of students enrolled take up the amazing offer of co-op. For those who don’t know what a co-op is, it stands for cooperative education. Think of it as a six-month full-time internship. We get to work in our future field and get real life, hands-on experience – you know, the kind of experience employers ask you for six months after you leave college with your million-dollar degree and the kind where you dress up like a forty-year-old who’s been at a company for ten years. Yup, that kind.
Drexel, who also runs on a terms system for said co-op, has what we call cycles. There are fall/ winter and spring/summer cycles. But, which one is the better out of the two?
In my opinion, if you are assigned a fall/winter co-op, your life sucks. Fall/winter co-op students work during the months of September – March. This also means they are in the physical classroom from the beginning of April to the end of August. And then, there’s the spring/summer co-op – the better one. You are working from the beginning of April until the fall term starts again in September. Oh yeah, we also start school in September, like a bunch of high schoolers.
Spring/summer co-op is better because realistically, you feel like a college student. Think about it, you’re not in the classroom from April to September. That’s when all your other friends from different colleges are free too. The best thing you can do is score a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job. This way, you can still hang out with your friends late at night, and party with them on the weekends, like a typical college student who actually has a free summer.
There’s the dreaded fall/winter co-op. Essentially, they have the bad end of the deal. Not only are they attending classes in the scorching heat we call summer, but they also don’t really get a Christmas break. The exception is maybe if your co-op is at a school. Think about it. All those college students who look for their four weeks off for Christmas break either sleep their life away or party. They get a four-week break from everything. Being on a fall/winter co-op, you probably get a couple of days. Did I mention going to work in the snow? You only get so many sick and call-out days. It’s not class where you can just not show up and probably still pass.
I personally think a fall/winter co-op would just suck. I have the spring/summer cycle and I can’t wait to wear my summer business wardrobe; it’s pretty awesome. I look forward to my Christmas college breaks and sleeping in on snow days and that is why the spring/summer co-op will always have the upper hand to me.