Final Stretch

It’s that time of the year, folks! Get prepping for the mass amount of finals that are soon to come around the corner. Pull up your big kid pants and let’s get rolling.

Well, what’s the importance of these last few weeks? Glad you asked, it’s because teachers and high school students (or some middle schoolers) need to understand the amount of pressure between the semester finals and the year finals.

It’s also important to raise awareness about the stress that tests cause students, especially accumulative finals. Formatives and Summatives are also a cause to the higher stress levels.

Same Branch, Different Leaf

That there are some students flooded with studying and other miscellaneous assignments from other classes, and then there are students who have a strong grasp on their assignment work. Either way, students should still prepare for finals and try their best. “I take a Concurrent Enrollment class and we had a final on Friday, and it was an easy test. Aside from that, I don’t feel stressed too much, because I know what I’m doing,” Lydia Coleman, a freshman, stated.

One obstacle that I’ve noticed, is that all the teachers think, “I know every other teacher is going to have the finals be the week before schools out, so I’ll just assign them this week.” 

When in reality, almost every teacher of mine and others’ have assigned the finals to be the same week as everyone else’s. I also find it interesting that some students don’t seem phased about the coming stress with the finals, yes some finals are low stakes, but others can and will be higher stakes. “I feel like my teachers have given me enough warning as far as the tests go, so I feel prepared and have all the resources I need to get good grades,” Lydia continued.

Doubling Up, What Next?

Some of the freshmen and sophomores I talked to, weren’t too stressed about the finals- which is a little unexpected due to the amount of extra core classes students are taking.

Camilla Gutierrez, a freshman, was asked about her workload and how prepared she feels for the upcoming tests and exams, said, “I’m probably going to be suffocating in finals because this week I have the AP History test, and then the science final, then I had the English final, which Halboth was very flexible about that, and then the math final, which is scary.”

Harder and more advanced core classes, such as AP classes or higher grade classes, typically assign more work, which affects kids in a positive way or negative. But all opinions set aside, some people know how to manage their time and stress levels.

The point is to raise awareness about how stressful or non-stressful finals week can be, and so that students can have time to prepare for each subject. 

It’s also how all the teachers say that the finals week won’t be stressful or high stakes, but then the tests actually turn out to be high standards and heavy towards grades.

What Can Be Done?

Students should tell their teachers when and how many finals a week they’ll have so that the stress levels go down, rather than having 8 finals in 4 days, it’s easier and takes more stress off students. 

Students, you should reach out to your teachers, they’re there to support you, sometimes make your life easier.

Teachers, please coordinate with each other and see when other teachers were planning on giving out the finals! It would be greatly appreciated across the board of students!