While the end of the year is approaching, so are finals. Most finals will take place from May 16 to May 20. Finals typically take place two times a year, at the end of the first semester, and at the end of the school year.
“You usually get a week to study over everything you’ve learned over the semester,” sophomore Taylor Tevis said. “It usually doesn’t affect your grade that much if you don’t do good.”
A final is a test that encompasses a large amount of material. However, there are pedicures that restrict finals from making large impacts on students’ grades.
“The format is up to the individual teachers,” principal Mr. Todd Mueller said. “However, it cannot account for more than 10 percent of a student’s grade.”
Throughout a school year students will take a variety of different tests. Although finals commonly stand out from other tests and are seen as a bigger deal.
“Finals are different in the aspect that they usually are comprehensive,” Mr. Mueller said. “Meaning they cover material from the entire semester/year as opposed to a single chapter.”
To some students finals might seem like an unnecessary annoyance. Yet, there are several reasons why many classes end with a comprehensive assessment.
“Probably just to see what you know and how well you know it,” freshman Liz Aure said. “To see if the teachers are teaching the right information, and to see how well you retain that information.”
While many students believe that the purpose of finals is to see how well they remember previous lessons, this is not the case. According to Mr. Mueller, the main purpose of finals is to prepare students for college where finals are more common.
A multitude of classes have finals, but not all of them do. This is because finals are up to individual teachers or their departments.
“Some classes learn a lot more stuff, so it would be harder to test over everything.” freshman Maddi Smith said. “I think some classes should have them and some shouldn’t; because, some of them everything is connected, and some of it’s completely random.”
As finals are tests over a lot of material, and are often some of the last tests of the year, they can seem intimidating to some students. Several students find they get more stressed over finals than they do with other tests.
“I think it’s stressful and a lot of pressure,” Aure said. “It’s kind of nice to do really good on them. It’s hard to remember some of the stuff that’s on them sometimes. I guess it’s also hard when you have other stuff going on. The stress doesn’t seem worth it, but in the end it is.”