Instead of being a refreshing end to the semester, the first two weeks of January are stressful for many ELHS students.
The inconsistent types and times of final exams makes this time overwhelming for students. Some teachers have final exams before break, some before the exam time period and some during the exam time period. Langston Chambers (9) thinks that students should be able to use our winter break as a break. He finds himself worrying about midterms instead of using the time away from school to relax.
“I prefer having to test before break and then having those two weeks to recover from the exams and not think about anything at all,” Chambers said.
French teacher Brenna Christopoulos thinks differently. From a teacher’s perspective, she would rather have finals after break so she can ease into teaching.
“A lot of students want it to be before break so they don’t forget everything over two weeks,” Christopoulos said. “As a teacher, I see how crazy students are those two weeks before break and the idea of sitting down for exams when you’re about to go to winter break is crazy to me.”
Projects also can mix things up. Some teachers do solo projects that the students have been prepping and working on for a week or two before exams, while others have group projects to work on during exam week. Students like Sophia Palomba (10) would rather use their creativity to show for their work this semester, as she finds tests to be overwhelming.
“I don’t really like tests because they stress me out,” Palomba said. “You take it all in one period and it’s a lot at once.”
With the schedule varied, depending on your teacher, the form of test you take may also vary. Some teachers, like U.S. History and AP Government teacher Jeffery Lyon, give tests over the entirety of the first semester while other teachers do shorter tests on the latest unit.
“I use the standard multiple choice final exam, mainly because it’s easier to put everybody on the same level,” Lyon said. “A lot of essays or project based final exams can be very subjective.”
Students feel that studying for tests over the latest unit is easier, while studying over the semester is very time consuming. There are many different study methods, but the most successful one for many students is study guides given by their teachers.
“I’ll study nightly for every subject,” Chambers said. “For the more difficult classes I’ll study more, maybe like 45 minutes to an hour. For the subjects I already kind of know about, maybe 15-20 minutes.”
Students have a variety of feelings towards taking final exams. Some students like Chambers think that students shouldn’t have to take final exams if there are unit tests. Upper classmen like Elliot Pennington (12) think that some classes need finals while others don’t.
“Final exams are stupid,” Chambers said. “You have to go back and learn this stuff from the beginning of the year and having tests from each of those units shows where you were when you best knew the subject. I don’t think we need another test with the same questions.”
At ELHS, we have finals to prepare students for the final exams that happen in college. Most students that graduate from ELHS go on to some type of college or trade school. Lyon thinks finals should be mandatory to set students up for success.
“We’re not doing our job if we don’t start getting our students into the thought process that at the end of this content or the end of this particular class, there’s going to be a summative final exam,” Lyon said.
