UX Academy: Community-wide breaks, Pauses, and Track Switches
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This article covers everything you need to know about community-wide breaks, pauses, and track switches during your UX Academy course. Questions covered in this article: |
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Are there any breaks during UX Academy?
UX Academy has community breaks four times throughout the calendar year. During community breaks, you're not expected to work on your course and mentors aren't expected to be available, but you can if you choose to.
Course progress is paused during community break periods, so there’s no need to use your own pause time. Group Crits are also paused during community breaks. Once the break is over, your completion date and coursework due dates will be adjusted to account for these community breaks.
We will announce 2025 breaks shortly. You can find more information about 2024 breaks below:
Who | When | Coursework resumes |
UX Academy students & mentors Career Services students & mentors |
April 8th – 14th | April 15th |
UX Academy students & mentors Career Services students & mentors |
August 12th – 18th | August 19th |
UX Academy students & mentors Career Services students & mentors |
November 25th – December 1st | December 2nd |
UX Academy Foundations students & mentors UX Academy students & mentors Career Services students & mentors |
December 23rd - January 5th | January 6th 2025 |
Requesting a UX Academy pause
Per our policies, as a UX Academy student, you are allowed two, 1-week pauses. During a pause, you will have access to your coursework, but you won't be able to schedule mentor sessions.
In order to request a pause:
- Log into UX Academy
- Locate the pause request form under course links.
- Answer a few quick questions and submit
- That's it! We'll review your request and follow up shortly afterward
Please note, while paused, your hours completed/behind in the program will continue as normal and your Scheduled Completion Date will automatically update once your pause ends and your enrollment has been unpaused.
Pauses can only be taken in 1-week increments and can only start/end on a week day.
Requesting a Career Services pause
We completely understand that the job search is not an easy journey. In Career Services, students are eligible to take 1 week of pause during Career Services for any reason. This week of pause will not affect Tuition Reimbursement Policy eligibility or impact the duration of your enrollment in Career Services.
To request a pause:
- Log into your dashboard
- Locate the pause request form under course links (click here for reference)
- Answer a few quick questions and submit
- We'll review your request and follow up shortly
Additional time away
Beyond 1 week, we ask students to work through the program without taking breaks or pauses. The reasoning behind this, in addition to wanting to maintain your job search momentum, is that when students need to take a long break from their job search, this often means losing touch with your design skills, making it more difficult to assess whether you are still a good candidate for the roles to which you are applying. We want to make sure that you're setting yourself up for success while taking care of yourself how you can.
All this said, we understand that life happens, and are able to approve up to 60 days of total time away throughout the program, upon request. Do note that taking any pause beyond 1 week will render you ineligible for the Tuition Reimbursement Policy. As a reminder, per our policies, enrollments in Career Services last for 26 weeks past graduation regardless of time away.
You may request additional time away via your dashboard with the same steps outlined above.
Track switches
You can certainly switch your track in UX Academy from full-time to part-time, or vice versa.
Please note that you can only switch between tracks once during your UX Academy enrollment. Please note that:
- We may also need to assign you to a different mentor when you switch tracks; this depends on your current mentor’s capacity.
- If you are in Phase 2, please check with us to see if you are eligible for a switch.
Before requesting a switch, we’d encourage you to take a look at the part-time (20 hours a week) and full-time (40 hours a week) syllabuses.
They are quite different course experiences, and which one is right for you will depend on your other commitments, how quickly you want to complete the course, and how intensively you prefer to work.
The full-time track might be for you if:
- you have a schedule clear of other major time commitments
- you are highly motivated to complete the course within 3 months;
- you are experienced and confident at independent learning
The part-time track might be for you if:
- you need to balance UX Academy with other commitments, like working a job more than half-time
- you are okay with the course taking 6 months rather than 3
- you would prefer to study flexibly and at your own pace
Before submitting your request, please be sure to discuss your decision with your mentor to make sure your mentor will be able to continue to support you once you switch tracks.
We are careful to match students with mentors who complement both their time availability and personal goals. This is mostly because full-time students meet their mentor twice a week, while part-time students meet their mentor once a week.
The Self-paced track
For more information about the Self-paced track, take a look here.