Despite the short days and chilly (and snowy!) weather, January continues to be a special time for University students and faculty. For three weeks each January, prior to the start of second semester, students take a break from their usual classes and immerse themselves in a single subject of their choosing. While the course offerings change each year, one thing remains true no matter the subject: that students, and their teachers, dive headfirst into a topic in a way that simply isn’t possible during the normal school year. The learning can look very different from one class to another, but the immersion is real and formative.
What is the experience of J-Term like? That can be a difficult question to answer, but as per usual, one of our students this year illuminated it beautifully. The National Parks: History & Contemporary Issues course spent its first two weeks in the classroom, deepening students’ knowledge of the US national parks system before leaving for a week to visit Yosemite National Park and Muir Woods. Part of the experience of this class was a collective agreement to distance themselves from technology in order to be fully present in nature, and with each other. This 9th-grade student described their experience standing amid a grove of towering redwood trees:
I felt small, not in a bad way, just quiet inside my head. Like my thoughts slowed down because they couldn’t keep up with what I was seeing. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t confused. I was just overwhelmed in a calm way. The trees were just there, huge and silent, and my mind kept repeating the same thought. How can something alive be this big?
This year, J-Term class topics ranged from basketball to 3-D printing, from the Alaskan frontier to Japanese history and culture. The new list of classes for January 2027 will be available this spring!
