I love snow, a lot. I also like having unexpected days off of school. It’s always nice to get a break when you don’t know it's coming. So put the two together and it should be amazing, right? Sure. Snow days are pretty great during the snow day. But after that, it means having to go later in the year to make up the missed days.

I guess at the time school is canceled for a snow day it doesn’t really seem like going later on in the year matters too much. At Uni everyone’s just so surprised they actually canceled school, with its reputation of never closing. It seems like a snow day in central Illinois is a really big deal.

Three years ago, when I lived in New England, if you had asked me how often my school had snow days I would have said an average of at least five times per year. And that’s not counting delays.

In the district where I used to live it wasn’t a surprise to learn that the school calendar was never quite accurate. That’s because the number of days the calendar said students would be in school came out to a number around 185. Now, why the extra five days?

The state only requires schools to meet for 180 days each year. No, it wasn’t a mistake. The additional five days weren’t added on for certain. That was just the estimated time when schools would break for summer vacation. In order to get a fairly accurate calendar, the school district had to add five extra days on to account for snow days.

On some years, that wasn’t enough. When you add up starting school after Labor Day, a February vacation, and snow days getting close to double digits, I wouldn’t get out of school until the end of June.

Not only did I have numerous snow days when living in New England, but some days public schools would have delays due to weather. This was possible with the public schools because most students were taken to school by buses, so it wasn’t a problem getting students rides when their parents still had to go off to work. If the roads were too dangerous they’d just wait until they had been cleaned up enough for it to be safe to drive again.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t exactly work for Uni, seeing as how there is no bus system to transport kids whenever it’s needed. So instead of just waiting out the bad weather, school must be canceled if students can’t make it in the morning. What is only a morning’s worth of bad weather can turn into an entire day of school to make up.

Snow days are great once in a while, especially when you’re in dire need of a break. But when a day off of school in the winter turns into a day in school in the summer, having too many unscheduled days off starts to lose its appeal.