Imagine a mass meeting held for all Iowa State professors. The theme is: “Hell on Earth: 62 Assignments in One Week.” At the meeting, professors choose one week in which students will have their projects due — the week before Thanksgiving break.

It doesn’t exactly work that way, but many students are finding themselves wondering: “Why does the due date for most homework assignments, projects and tests fall on the same week?”

As the holiday season approaches and the fall semester comes to a close, students say they’re drowning in homework due right before and after Thanksgiving break.

The difficulty becomes even greater when scholarships, internships and graduate school applications are do at the same time as class projects and term papers.

Lisa Solberg, a senior in biology, said she figures instructors have to fit in one more test before finals. She said it is simply a natural progression to have another exam.

Solberg said the year starts out with people getting used to being back in school. Professors are more lenient and assignments are small, she said.

Then at the end of the semester, Solberg said, students are assigned the big projects because they have learned in the class most of the information to apply to them.

“I just hate it that it turns out that way,” Solberg said, who has completed a quiz, a paper and an exam this week and will write two more papers over the break.

Katie Rust, a junior in advertising, said one of her classes does not have a syllabus and the professor “springs a lot of stuff” on the class. This week she worked on a law briefing, an advertising project and took an advertising test.

“A lot of professors want stuff due before Thanksgiving because they want to correct it over the break.

“They don’t realize that we have other classes,” Rust said.

She will spend the vacation studying for her two upcoming tests, doing a book report and completing another advertising project and a marketing project.

Professors, however, say in most cases students know from the beginning of the semester when papers and projects are due.

It should be no surprise then, they say, that some classes may overlap.

And, though it’s a radical notion for most students, instructors say it is indeed possible to begin working on a paper or project before the last minute.

Barbara Mack, associate professor of journalism and mass communication, said it’s a matter of rationality.

Mack, who has her journalism law students turn in a term paper today, said professors need the time over Thanksgiving break to grade.

“You’ll get even with us next week when you’re having fun with your friends and we’re going blind,” she said.

With Finals Week looming, Mack said it isn’t feasible for most instructors to wait until after Thanksgiving break to make papers and projects due.

Still, Dave Cantonwine, a junior in biochemistry wondered if instructors realize that students have several commitments this week. “Maybe they [instructors] do know you have other classes, but they don’t care,” he said.

Lisa Rhoades, a freshman in fashion merchandising, corrected two papers, took two tests and a quiz this week along with keeping up with her normal workload. She has two projects to complete during the break.

As a first-year student, she said her college academic experience is a lot different from high school because no one cares if the work gets done.

“You have to be really self-motivated,” she said.

Dave Evans, a freshman in pre-civil engineering, said he has not been too stressed out even though he took a physics test and a calculus test and wrote an eight-page report this week.

Over break he anticipates devoting 10-15 hours to a project and presentation on a robot he and others built. After Evans works on that, he has another smaller paper to write.

“I feel like there is a lot of pressure,” Evans said.

But Evans said getting work out of the way this week might not be all bad. “I think it’d be better [to have work due] this week because you can spend time relaxing over Thanksgiving with your family,” Rhoades said.