We all know how stressful it can be to take a test. Finals are next week – and just the thought of have to study this weekend can be stressful. You load up your backpack with books and binders and go to the library for a full day of cramming.
Take a moment and ask yourself: are finals really that helpful or are they useless? A student spends the entire year learning information – and throughout the semester is given tests, quizzes, and papers to regurgitate information. Shouldn’t that be enough? Let’s face it – any student who is studying for a final, is wrapping their head around “what grade might I receive?” Are we even understanding the concepts, facts, figures….or are we simply training our brain to memorize, without really grasping the idea behind it?
School should be about going beyond the material – asking ourselves, what IS the point of what i’m learning? I understand that grades are necessary…but I feel that professors should really think about how to help students not only learn and understand the material, but also find a way to help them remember it in years to come. If we can relate what we are learning in school – to real life, wouldn’t that be more effective? How can I grasp an idea by simply circling in A,B,C, or D? Why not make our final something hands on? Those are the things that I will remember later on in life, and in turn, will be able to teach my children.
On another note, in light of finals week….
Here are some tips to REDUCE your anxiety on test taking! Hope this helps! Happy studying, everyone! 🙂
alexleigh6
alilogue
carleymclellon
catieeppler
danielledheron
David Lynch
eglundberg
french111
jzentz
katemaddox
klew23
kristenlyon
ksdavis04
Laura
lorenjn
maconheikes
mdpacifico
mwillsey
Dr. Franssen
phonecoffee
psychphil90
rmb2
rmc10
tdheikens
thesmitty21
treyh43
Vicky Virtudes
whitneyroberts
psych125 
I completely agree in which I personally do not find finals to be very helpful for me. I have always not been a good test-taker and having a lot of information put into one test not only stresses me out but also leaves me to not knowing the concepts fully and sometimes not doing as well as I would like. I think that finals should not be based upon knowing specific facts in many different chapters in which is solely based upon memorization and not actually learning something. I completely agree in which I believe schools need to make finals more hands-on and not based upon specific material I learned months ago; instead, there should be a specific task in which students had to complete in which would incorporate the material as a whole. IN addition, I also believe that finals need to be hands-on in which I will be able to use later in life rather than cramming information into my brain and memorizing it in which I do not fully understand or comprehend the material due to having to know so much information into one test.
I also completely agree. I feel almost like teachers give their students a final exam just becuase that is what they have always done. A final project or something that encmopasses the whole lot of material would be a fantastic solution. I know that I spend so much time reviewing the material the day before that by the time I get to the test I am so tired of it all that much of it seems to run together. Admittedly, there are certain tests which a hands-on approach would be difficult and the teachers might be hard pressed to make sure that they are testing the students’ knowledge instead of their ability to look up the answers, but all the same, for many classes this is something that teachers wouuld do well to look into. A teacher’s style adapts to their students ability to learn with the knowledge they have, so why not their testing process?
I feel like this cramming for final exams and the huge pressure of getting a good grade is not representitive of what you learn over the course of the semester.Is that what we pay college tuition for route memory of formulas and facts to acheive a grade? or an expierience? but the question is how do we test upon that?
I disagree with this post I believe that finals really aren’t as bad as everyone makes them out to be. First of all we spend all semester taking test and quizzes so if we study constantly through the semester brushing up on those old quizzes should be a breeze, and more importantly by having to review all the information of the semester it’s more likely to stick with us. I’m sure that if you look at the grades of finals they are probably very similar to the student’s grade in that class before the final. I liked the link at the end of the post on how to deal with the stress of finals week, because I really do believe that if you keep calm and review you can make it through finals week just fine.
I personally find that I always do much worse on the finals than I did througout the class simply because they stress me out so much. I am so heavily focused on what I need to make on final in order to get a certain grade in the class that it clouds my brain. In addition, I try to review too much information and we all know that cramming doesn’t work.
Finals are a very hectic and crazy time for me and everyone else. Knowing that you’ll be tested on things that you learned at the beginning of the semester is a very terrifying! I think that it would be more beneficial to students and teachers to learn and teach in a way that is more hands-on. I have talked before about how I’m a kinesthetic learner and learn by seeing, hearing, and doing things, and with all of these I hardly ever forget material. Instead of just taking notes or listening to lectures, I think that students would grasp and comprehend information much more if they were able to actually do activities.
I know it’s hard to come up with activities for a lot of subjects, but a simple poster, or moving -around activity would help.
Finals are the most stressed time for me during school. I personally hate having to cram at the last minute for every test. I go through stuff and feel i dont know it even though i do… once the test is finished. I completely forget simple things that are already forged into my brain. Finals really get me stressed but i try to not let it affect my social life. however you never know..