Some might question the point of writing this blog, but I think that it answers one of my biggest questions about coming to Amherst/College in general. How/when do snow days happen? Being from the other side of Massachusetts, I knew it would snow, but I also knew that out west here around Amherst, it snows a lot more. The other schools I was looking at were also in the Northeast, so the question always stood out to me. Well, finally today we had our first snow day of the year, but I’ve heard that is already a rare occurrence (I’ll get to why in a second).
First, I’ll just mention how snow days are announced. I had an early class this morning– 8:30, ew– and when I woke up, my roommate checked his phone and saw an email from the school informing everyone that the school was closed today in anticipation of the snowstorm. That confused us since we were curious how we were going to eat, until we checked and saw that the dining hall on campus remained open– thankfully. When I went to eat breakfast, I had heard from an upperclassmen that snow days were pretty rare at Amherst, and I wondered why. Well, I wondered why until I walked outside of the dining hall and saw all the amazing people had already cleared most of the path back to my dorm. Amherst, and I assume all Northeast colleges, deal with snow every year, so they know how to handle it. We had all the streets plowed, walkways salted, and stairs cleared even though the campus was technically not even open today. So to answer my own question from back then: snow days are not as common as they might be if you go to high school in a snowy climate, but snowy days are far less of an inconvenience thanks to all the people who work hard to clear the snow.
Another question you might be asking is, what is a snow day like? At one point I had joked to one of my friends, “You take away an Amherst student’s classes for one day and he complains about being bored”, but the day turned out to be the opposite. There were still tons of students walking around, hanging out in the dining hall, and a few friends and I specifically played football in the snow on the quad. Some people stayed in, some went out and froze their hair (it wasn’t only me), and everyone that I’ve talked to so far said they enjoyed the day off, even if the amount of snow we actually got throughout the day might’ve been a bit disappointing.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to reach out, my email is jdesmond28@amherst.edu