Why I decided to transfer out of Colorado College

When I chose Colorado College, the Block Plan was one of the things that attracted me most. Taking one class at a time sounded like the perfect plan for me, to focus on one class rather than constantly divide my attention among four or five different classes. I love to “lock in”, sit down and work for hours at a time… (see my last article).

And in some ways, it works exactly as advertised.

The Block Plan can provide a type of immersion that is impossible to recreate in a semester system. A professor can spend an entire morning (9-12pm) on a discussion, a lab can run into the afternoon (almost all day in some cases), and a field course can leave campus (to Baca Campus) for days at a time without students having to worry about missing three other classes.

My experience, however, eventually became more complicated.

The academic problem

The thing I began to realize was that having approximately the same number of instructional hours does not necessarily mean having the same amount of time to learn.

That may sound werid, however the distinction became increasingly edvident to me, particularly as I became more interested in economics, finance, mathematics, accounting, and other cumulative subjects.

Story Time [Skip if you want]

When I signed up for my first Calc 1 class, I was excited. But on the first day, once the professor started teaching, I got lost pretty quickly. I wanted to leave and drop the class because I didn’t feel ready. Then I remembered I was on the block plan and had my afternoons free. I told myself I would “lock in” after class, go over what I understood, and work on what I didn’t. And I actually did.

The next day, I came back feeling more confident, but we had already moved on to a completely different topic; indeterminate forms, and I was lost again. I had missed the drop deadline, so I emailed my advisor to figure out my options. Long story short, I dropped the class and took the block off.

During that time, I decided to go back through algebra. I worked on it from November 18 until Christmas break and now have over a million energy points on Khan Academy. I am willing to put in the time, lots of it.

Oh and next semester I got an A in Cal 1!

– Continue

In a semester course, I can learn something, struggle with it, sleep on it, return to it several days later, forget part of it, relearn it, see it on an exam, and continue using it throughout the semester.

On the Block Plan, that entire cycle has to occur within three and a half weeks. Then the block ends. The next Monday, you can go from spending nearly every waking academic hour thinking about one subject to studying something completely unrelated.

What surprised me was learning that concerns like mine are almost as old as the Block Plan itself.

The original plan was developed under Glenn Brooks, a Colorado College political science professor appointed by President Lew Worner to lead a review of the college’s academic structure. Colorado College’s own history describes Brooks as the person who gradually assembled what became the Block Plan.

But the original 1969 proposal was considerably more flexible than requiring every course to fit within the same three-and-a-half-week structure. In one early scheduling experiment, faculty designed 504 three-week courses, 235 six-week courses, 44 nine-week courses, and even two twelve-week courses, and Brooks wrote that “courses of varying length and format can be run simultaneously.” His original 1969 planning documents are available through ERIC.

Even more interesting to me, Brooks specifically contemplated longer courses when professors believed students needed additional time to process difficult material. He proposed an alternative format for courses that should be offered “over a longer period to allow more absorption time for the material.”

absorption time.

The people designing the system recognized that concentration and learning were not always correlated, and that certain subjects might benefit from being distributed over a longer period.

Mathematics was one of the places where this concern became apparent.

According to Colorado College’s history of its Mathematics Department, the department was initially “slow to embrace” the new system. CC’s history acknowledges that although a block could provide an equivalent number of contact hours, calculus posed different difficulties because “the quick pace of the block meant that time to digest material was shortened.”

When the faculty reconsidered the Block Plan in 1974, they voted overwhelmingly, 80 to 5, to continue it. But according to CC’s departmental history, a faculty member recalled that most of those five dissenting votes came from mathematicians.

I think that history is important because it makes the issue more complicated than saying the Block Plan is either good or bad.

Colorado College’s Math Department eventually identified real benefits to the format as well: professors receive rapid feedback from students, close faculty-student interaction can make it easier to identify problems quickly, independent study can be incorporated more easily, and complete immersion can sometimes lead to deeper understanding. By 1999, CC’s history says most mathematics faculty supported the system.

So my argument is not that mathematics cannot be taught successfully on the Block Plan. It clearly can.

My conclusion is more personal: I realized that I learn cumulative material better when I have more calendar time to interact with it.

I want the opportunity to revisit a concept weeks later. I want material from September still actively appearing in my academic life in November. I want difficult ideas to have time to settle rather than feeling as though I need to understand them immediately because the course will be over in a few weeks.

For some students, that compression produces extraordinary focus. For me, concentration eventually stopped feeling synonymous with learning.

The work-life balance problem

My other major issue with the Block Plan had less to do with what happened inside the classroom and more to do with everything outside of it.

The problem was consistency. My schedule could vary dramatically from one block to another.

One block might leave me with significant time for clubs, athletics, career development, independent projects, friends, or simply having a life outside the classroom. Then the next block might consume nearly every afternoon.

That made my life feel strangely binary: either everything was happening, or almost nothing was happening. And I eventually found that more difficult than simply being consistently busy, as in I have a plan every day.

What makes this particularly interesting is that Colorado College itself acknowledges the problem.

On a page written for organizations interested in working with CC students, the college’s Collaborative for Community Engagement explains the challenges created by students’ rotating schedules. CC writes that those schedules make it “difficult to schedule long-term projects” and gives almost exactly the situation I experienced:

A student may not have any afternoon commitments one block, but a lab requirement every afternoon the next.

The college also advises outside organizations to build flexibility into their plans specifically because student schedules can “change from month to month.”

That is one of the clearest descriptions I have found of my problem with the Block Plan. A class disappears after three and a half weeks. Life does not.

Clubs still meet. Leadership responsibilities still exist. Athletic training continues. Jobs and internships expect consistency. Friends do not operate according to the block calendar. Career development does not stop because you happen to be taking an unusually demanding course.

I found it difficult to develop sustainable routines when my academic availability could fundamentally change every month.

I increasingly wanted a college experience where academics, clubs, exercise, professional development, friendships, and outside responsibilities could coexist within a relatively predictable weekly rhythm.

That does not mean I wanted college to be easier. I want it to be more consistent.

So why transfer?

I am not transferring because I think Colorado College is a bad school. If anything, my decision would be easier if I did.

There are professors I respect, people I am glad I met, and experiences I probably could not have had at a conventional university.

I also understand why many students love the Block Plan. There are classes where the format makes enormous sense, and field science may be the easiest example. A geology class can leave campus for days. A laboratory course can devote an entire afternoon to an experiment. A discussion-based seminar can follow an idea for hours rather than stopping because fifty minutes have elapsed.

Those are legitimate advantages.

But eventually I realized that choosing a college is not just about determining whether an institution is objectively good. It is about figuring out whether that institution is good for you.

I want greater continuity in my education. I want difficult quantitative concepts to develop across months instead of weeks. I want more time for what Glenn Brooks himself called “absorption.”

I want a schedule where I can make serious commitments to clubs, organizations, athletics, professional development and other people without wondering whether my availability will completely change when the next block begins. I want more consistency between academics and the rest of my life.

None of that requires me to believe that Colorado College has failed. It means that during my time here, I learned something about myself that I probably could not have learned from a college brochure or campus tour: I learned what kind of environment I learn best in.

And sometimes figuring that out means leaving.