Finals Week
By: Reilly, Emi, Athena
In previous years, the Academy has implemented a special schedule for finals week to accommodate the increase in major assignments; this term, finals week will remain consistent with a regular school week, similar to the fall term.
During finals weeks of a normal school year, students had fewer classes per day and were given longer blocks of time for each class to accommodate testing. The schedule had more free blocks and formats specifically for biology, chemistry, physics and English.
The change in schedule was “made to give classes as much class time as possible within our reduced format schedule,” according to Dean of Academic Affairs Laura Marshall. Due to the ongoing pandemic, classes now only meet three times a week through a hybrid of Zoom and in person instruction.
Many students expressed appreciation for the new finals schedule. “I would imagine it being less stressful for people, just because it seems like any other week,” upper Emma Chen said. “Since the schedule is one familiar to people, there’s likely also less stress about missing an appointment.”
Upper Zara Ahmed agreed. “I think having a down-sized environment for the testing itself will relieve a lot of students of that big-test pressure, and hopefully alleviate some of the stress at the end of the term,” she said.
“Due to the new weekly schedule, our classes meet much less often than they did last year, so it makes sense that the administration would want us to be able to have as many class periods as possible,” Ahmed added.
Senior Joshua Lum believed the modified schedule did not affect his classes. “Honestly, I don’t really think the finals format changes all that much. Teachers have already planned everything beforehand anyway from previous terms,” he said. “It hasn’t really affected me at all.”
“I wouldn't say the workload necessarily decreases, but I definitely prefer this format just given the amount of flexibility it offers me,” senior Scarlett Lin noted.
However, not all students were fond of the irregular finals format. “I preferred the final blocks because I only had to focus on a few finals per day, but now I might have to go to classes whose finals are already finished,” upper Allison Kim said.
“I've noticed that a lot of my teachers are front loading work, perhaps because they'll have less time to grade over the short break,” Kim said.
Additionally, prep Jane Park expressed worry over her workload towards the end of term. “Given the arduous workload at Exeter and the difficulty of exams/assignments, I am expecting to cut down on a lot of my extracurriculars in order to simply keep up,” Park said. “Considering that there is already an added layer of pressure with the hybrid learning and online classes, adding in even a few hours of break where we can just study/socialize would be extremely conducive to everyone’s mental health.”
Upper Sava Thurber commented on the differences between the old and new finals schedules. “I have mixed feelings because the lack of a finals week means that (at least in my experience) the finals are more spread out,” he said. “For example, I already submitted my history and math finals and my other three finals are nicely spaced so that it is much less stressful compared to the regular schedule where everything is due in like 2 or 3 days.”
“Part of me likes the 3 day cram because it means the rest of it is easier and part of me likes the non-finals week because it means I don’t have to cram at the end,” Thurber continued. “It’s all just personal preference for how you want your stress distributed. I call it the law of conservation of anxiety. It can’t be created or destroyed... only redistributed.”
Lower Morgan Gao noted his experience with finals as a remote student. “I appreciate it when teachers try to be flexible with final projects/tests,” he said. “For remote students it's been kind of tough but being empathetic/giving benefit of the doubt is key.”
Marshall shared ways for students to alleviate their workload. “The regular homework guidelines will be in place,” Marshall said. “If students have more than two major assignments or assessments in one day, they can reschedule all but two of them. This is true at any point in the term and will help spread out the workload across the last week in the same manner that a special schedule would.”
“Any student having difficulty finding accommodation should ask me for assistance in rescheduling one (or two) of these tasks as soon as possible,” Saltman said.