Quarter system classes, especially science/math/engineering classes, have two to three midterms. This means you will be taking a midterm every two to three weeks (absurd, I know). And this is not counting finals.

Speaking of finals, you have an extra set to look ‘forward’ to each academic year thanks to winter quarter, which doesn’t exist in the semester schools. Having grown up in the semester system, I know that, at least for me, as a child I developed a strong sense of the 5-week cycle for when the stress of midterms and finals would begin and end, thereby allowing a natural flow of stress increasing and decreasing; in quarter get used to this artifically elevated stress being ever-present, even though your rational mind is telling you you are being tested on 1/3 less material. Doesn’t matter, your body still gets stressed out like it is a THIRD (extra) session’s finals on a par with the semesters from your childhood.

Finally, we all grow up on the semester system so it is a cruel twist to have our most important academic stage, college, be on a completely alien calendar from what our bodies and minds have spent their most malleable years getting drilled into them until it is second nature.

To say nothing of the fact that you’re in school until June, while your friends get to celebrate their freedom from school as the rest of the nation goes on long road trips or sees big summer blockbusters on Memorial Day; and that month of vacation you get in September is essentially as most of your friends are on semester, and therefore back in school, leaving you home alone.

Go (stay) semester, and save yourself the needless pain.