Now that Appalachian State University students are back on campus following a break, some students are scrambling to prepare for finals.

Exams begin Monday and tension is high. With classes still in session and work still to be done, Reading Day should come as a relief.

Ideally, classes would be canceled and students would get a chance to prepare for exams.

That is, if Reading Day fell on a weekday.

According to registrar.appstate.edu, Reading Day falls on Dec. 7, a Saturday. This means that students do not have an extra day off during the final week of classes to prepare for finals.

This is unfortunate, considering that Reading Day could be a very useful extra day for exam preparation for students.

The fact that it falls on a Saturday completely defeats the point of having the day at all.

Essentially, it is the same as any other Saturday spent studying. Most students would have spent Dec. 7 studying for exams regardless of whether this day was labeled or not.

Aside from the idea that students will all be studying and things will be quiet around campus, what makes the day any different from any other day before exam week?

Projects and assignments tend to build up during the days before exams. Classes are ending, and deadlines are approaching.

With so much left to be done, it seems unfair to deprive students of an additional study day.

Had Reading Day fallen earlier in the week, the pressure of assignments would have been somewhat alleviated and those extra 24 hours could have been spent preparing for the tests that weigh so heavily on us as students. For most of us, final exams count for a large portion of a class average.

It is outrageous to think that students preparing for such important tests can somehow make time for so many additional assignments without the use of a true Reading Day in place of a class day.

Students should be afforded an extra day to prepare themselves for exams.

Without this critical extra time, most of us will find ourselves cramming, pouring over textbooks late into the night between working on assignments and projects that still need to be turned in.

Hopefully, this can be taken into consideration when planning the academic calendar for future years.

Opinion: ERICA BADENCHINI, Opinion writer