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The Academic Year at The Dhahran School
June 5, 2005
When I moved to Dhahran from California, I was also making my transition from elementary school to middle school. I had to adjust from my elementary school's quarter system to my new middle school's trimester system. But here was the unique part - the trimesters were spread out across the year such that we no longer had the typical American three-month summer break.
The first trimester spanned from the beginning of September to around Thanksgiving (but naturally, the American Thanksgiving was not observed in Saudi Arabia).
The second trimester began around Thanksgiving but was interrupted by the four-week December break. In early January, the second trimester would resume and continue until the start of the five-week April break.
The third trimester would follow the end of the April break and continue until July 20ish (usually between the 25th and 31st). This would then mark the start of the summer break, which was a six-week break from the late July until the end of August.
Consequently, there were three shorter breaks of somewhat even length (an average of 5 weeks each) instead of a dominating three-month summer break with shorter winter and spring breaks. Those in favor of this academic year structure usually saw it as a benefit that none of the breaks were so lengthy that students would suffer brain rot and forget everything from the previous trimester. Furthermore, some expressed their preference of having three evenly distributed, mid-sized breaks over having most of their annual allocation of break days clumped in one large summer.
Still, summer was still a time when many expatriates in the community would travel, often to their original hometowns in the United States, Canada, Britain, or elsewhere. When this happened, it was often called a repat (short for repatriation). Thus, August was usually the month when the community had the least expats around. August also happens to be the hottest and most humid time of the year, making it unbearable to stick around.
But one thing bothered me about this year layout. By the time my summer break began, my friends in California had been out of school for two months. Their summers were approaching their ends, especially those who attended schools that began in late August. This, combined with the differences in the weekdays lineup and time zones, made it slightly more difficult to communicate with colleagues in the U.S. in real time. But I learned to live with the system, and besides, a little change in my way of life never hurts.
-Gordon Mei
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