What an interesting difference.

Yep. The state university in my hometown (a major employer) doesn't even have the same schedule as the local public schools. They try to keep it close, but since the local schools are always tweaking the schedule, it isn't hard and fast.

They try to keep it close

What universities here do is attempting to avoid colliding with the holiday season of the automn. There's nearly a month of holidays, going on according to the Jewish calendar, so its beginning can move from early September to early October.

The schools start on the 1st of September no matter what (which, yes, can sometime cause the craziness of going to school for a week and then throwing the whole schedule into vacation days spread all over the place, again). The universities wait until well after the ending of the holidays in order to begin their school year (so, yeah, their summers are longer, long enough to enable a summer semester if they want to).

I find it so interesting that here, with the combination of Jewish and general calendars, things are still in more order than what you describe.

Looks like this district has 3 different types of schedules [link] . One traditional, one...I'm not sure what it is, one multitrack year round (which means 4 different schedules on a year round cycle.)

(I have no idea why I'm googling all this. Avoiding work, I guess.)

I'm avoiding work too, or at least the physical building of work.

Playing hooky used to be more fun.

In Israel, all schools (that aren't universities) start on the 1st of September. They all have the same vacations (around the Jewish holidays). Obviously, we don't have troubles like plenty of snow days to take care of.

The public schools here (kindergarten through high school) are under individual state control, not federal control, which accounts for some of the difference. Then within each state, there can be differences from district to district.

I have no idea why I'm googling all this.

Um, because that's the power of the hivemind? One person asks a question, is too lazy to google herself, so some other person finds the answers for her?

Um, I mean, thanks. It's really interesting, in its own way.

individual state control, not federal control

Gotcha. I keep forgetting that difference, silly me.

Playing hooky used to be more fun.

Maybe you should do it under some other district's schedule? Maybe you're on vacation already according to one, and therefore playing hooky, when you anyway aren't supposed to work, has less of a flavor?

Maybe you're on vacation already according to one, and therefore playing hooky, when you anyway aren't supposed to work, has less of a flavor?

I love Nilly's spicy brains.

Gotcha. I keep forgetting that difference, silly me.

I think we're a silly country.

In a lot of the ways that have the most to do with day to day life, the US is really more like 50 individual countries, than one. Each has its governor, legislature, etc.

Yay, juliana both thinks I'm smart and likes me!

(Oh, and, juliana? Other than the fact that you looked absolutely amazing in pretty much each and every picture you appeared in from the F2F, and I include the ones in which you were sleepy and tired and up despite all that? There was a teacher I saw today, who looks like the cousin - or something like it - of the way you looked in those pictures. She has your bone structure, similar build (I think) and now I imagine your voice as hers. The only difference is that she had her hair longer, but it was also very red.)

the US is really more like 50 individual countries, than one

I guess that this is what my tiny little brain can't wrap itself around (well, it's hard for it to do the acrbatics that wrapping requires, when it's small and not stretch-y). That you're both one big state, but at the same time, very much not.

I'm reading a great book right now called "April 1865," which is about that pivotal month in American history (end of the Civil War, Lincoln's assasination, beginning of Reconstruction). One of the main points in it is how the United States developed in the years prior to the Civil War as a "federation" more than a nation, with "federation" being based in the Latin word "fides" and leading to an interpretation of the country as a group of states working together and cooperating with each other. Secession was always an option to the states, and in fact, the Founding Fathers viewed it as a real possibility (most of them viewed the whole nation-building process as not much more than an experiment in progress, and definitely did not foresee it lasting more than a few decades at most).

The United States was always viewed by its citizens as a plural--"The United States are..." What the Civil War did (in Shelby Foote's immortal words) was "turn us into an 'is.'" After the war, the phrasing rather quickly became "The United States is..." and has remained so to this day.

t /ends history lecture for the day