Post 2: Hell Week
Daily Schedule:
9 am: Wake up, make bed, brush teeth, get dressed.
9:45 am: Go get tea and a bagel and then bring it to the library.
2 pm: Leave for lunch.
2:45 pm: Go back to the library.
7 pm: Leave for dinner.
8 pm: Go back to the library.
3:30 am: Go home
4 am: Fall asleep
Every single day for the past 10 days has looked almost exactly the same.
Exceptions: There was one day when I had a final so I didn't go to the library until 1 pm and another day when I felt so tired that I fell asleep at my desk at 1 am and woke up at 4 am to go home. Yesterday I was so tired of eating the same dining hall food every day that I took a fryft to get thai food… it was the highlight of my week.
How can we expect students to be successful and productive when the school system is setting us up for failure. The entire idea of having one final test which essentially determines your grade is illogical. This problem is compounded by the fact that all finals occur at the same time. It seems impossible for a student to review and relearn all of the material that they learned in every class from an entire semester in 1 week. 15 weeks of material shoved into one test with 2 days off to study. Even when students begin reviewing in advance they still have other coursework to complete so they can never focus their full attention on one thing.
Administrators claim that they need to know students have an understanding of everything they have learned but in reality, students are just cramming in information that will leave their heads the second they move on to the next subject. The real way to ensure learning is to reduce stress and evaluate knowledge over time. If teachers gave more small assessments throughout the semester students would have time to really prepare and understand the concepts as they learned. Finals are not a test of a student's knowledge. They are a test of a student's short-term memorization skills. We need to stop treating them like they are an effective way to evaluate students because they just don’t work.
