We the undersigned wish for the spring term reading week which took place in week thirteen of the 2016/17 academic year to be moved to week 18 for the 2017/18 academic year and years following.

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This is a petition to move the spring term reading week in the Bristol University Arts Faculty (Arts, Humanities and Languages) from week 13 to week 18.

Having a reading week before the start of term is not useful for the vast majority of Arts, Humanities and Language Students, and is contributing to undue stress among them.

One argument made by those who support the term's reading week being before the start of term is that it is a welcome break after exams. However, as Arts, Humanities and Language Students we have very few, if any January exams, and so the week is just more time spent twiddling our thumbs waiting around for term to start.

Once we start again it's then a long 9 week slog to the Easter vacation with no time to cool off. People's stress builds up over the unrelenting term causing a deterioration in a student's capacity to learn, which is after all what we are at university to do.

Moving the reading week to week 18 would also bring our Faculty in line with the Faculty of Social Sciences meaning that joint honours who work between Social Sciences and Arts (e.g. Politics and Philosophy students) would have reading weeks that coincide.

I really hope you sign this as I'm sure we would all be a lot happier, more productive and generally better functioning students if we had a reading week at a time which is more beneficial to us.

Cheers!

Zak - Year 1 German Rep