Finals approaching, grades are due for the semester, sports consume most of their study time and the class schedule is all messed up. How much stress can students take? Students have to work in studying for finals, which takes hours and leads to them losing sleep, they have to keep their grades where they want while freaking out because teachers won’t put in assignments, student-athletes have practice and games that take hours and they won’t even see most of their teachers the rest of the week because of the finals schedule.
It’s the last week of the semester, should students be calm or do they need to worry?
Studying takes a while, especially a semester’s worth of it, and to add on top of it, they wait until the last minute to study and end up getting 2 hours of sleep the night before their final.
“I told myself I was going to study the weekend before, but I ended up waiting until the night before my final,” freshman Abigail Merritt said. “I have to take all of my finals because I have been absent a lot so I’m really stressed thinking about it all. I really can only blame myself and I’m planning to be better next semester.”
There are a lot of student-athletes, so balancing practice, games and studying can really weigh them down and lead them to feeling drained.
“The most stressful part of finals week is having to study for finals while having basketball practice for two hours everyday after I played a long game on Tuesday night,” freshman Nicholas Johnson said. “I got home late, and I had a final the next day so I didn’t have a lot of time to study.”
Teachers start getting lazy so they wait until the last minute to put in grades, this leads to students being on the edge and stressing all week about what their average for the semester will be.
“I’ve maintained my grades all semester but now that it’s the last week of the first semester, my teachers are waiting until the last minute to put my grades in,” sophomore Maycie Dewailly said. “It can be annoying because if they put in a major grade on Friday that I didn’t do great on, it can bring my grade down because they didn’t give me time to make a better grade, and then it will ruin my class rank.”
With the bell schedule being all over the place, students don’t get to see all of their teachers again which leads them to miscommunication and students don’t get to talk to them about their final grades.
“I really wish the schedule was normal because I don’t have time after school to talk to all of my teachers,” senior River Shaunfield said. “I need them to tell me what grades I’m missing or any grades I could make up so I can finish the semester happy with my grades. Because I’m a senior, my grades really matter for report cards and my transcript.”
Students feel a ton of emotions and pressure they put on themselves. They feel ecstatic when they’re not thinking about the next few days, but once those thoughts come to mind, they feel stressed and have so much to worry about.
“I’m really excited for Christmas break to come, but at the same time I’m extremely stressed,” junior Emma Stalder said. “I just need this week to be over already, so I can go back to having rest time and not having everything on my mind that I need to get done. I overthink a lot so it’s hard for me to feel motivated knowing how much I have to do. We get to get out early after the first two finals everyday, but I don’t feel productive at home because I know I need to study for my finals the next day but once I’m at home I feel lazy and tell myself to start studying but I don’t actually listen.”
