Feature Photo By: Erich Huynh Senior John Quach works on his homework during 3rd period in the library. As finals approach, students are tremendously studying in order to do well on their exams.
Are you ready to take finals at the end of the quarter? Rangeview has created a schedule for finals that they’re going to implement this winter.
Rangeview has always allowed teachers to pick out a day or days from the last week of the quarter to give a final exam for the class; depending on the day(s) they pick, a student could have one exam per one day but then could have 3 exams the next day.
However, the Rangeview administration has laid out a schedule — which will be their first time implementing one ever since Principal Ronald Fay has been at Rangeview — for finals.
The schedule is set to be permanent for future years, according to Assistant Principal Christy Hartford.
“[The schedule] … is to help mitigate you [the students] from having three finals in a day,” said Mr. Fay. “I think it is trying to emulate the accumulation of knowledge over a period of time and how you apply it; it gives you an opportunity to demonstrate what you know and hopefully in a lot of cases, you have students improve their grades.”
As shown in the picture, each day of the last week of the quarter has two specific periods that students take his/her finals for; each class lasts about 90 minutes long, and if you have an off period(s) for that day, then you get more free time or even the whole day off.
“ …[the schedule is] more organized than before: it’s better not having to take 5 finals in one day, “ said junior Phong Thai. “It feels great having a day off because I can catch up on sleep and do other activities that I couldn’t do before on a regular school day.”
The schedule is similar to college final exam schedules which, could possibly help prep students for college.
“I wish they would’ve brought this sooner!” said senior Ariana Carmody. “However, I’m not excited to be in some of my classes for longer than an hour.”
Teachers are great assets since students can approach and talk to them when it comes to preparing for final exams: they can answer questions about a unit/idea, can provide feedback, etc.
“Students will have more time to prepare for each exam: the built-in time will provide opportunities for students to have individual time to prepare, form study groups and allow teachers to host review sessions,” said science teacher, Mr. Russell. “The only real drawback that I see is that our grades are based on a quarter system, not a semester.”
Finals can be a stressful week for a lot of students: students can procrastinate, pull all-nighters, and can not prioritize his/her time, etc; finals can cause a lot of anxiety and hurt his/her mental health.
The students’ well beings are more important than their grades; if you are searching for ways to prepare for finals, visit the following articles on ways that are scientifically proven to help you be composed for your exams and get rid of any anxiety:
- https://www.heysigmund.com/studying-9-scientifically-proven-ways-to-supercharge-your-learning/
- https://theconversation.com/how-to-overcome-exam-anxiety-67445
The winter final exams will take place the last week of the quarter, December 17-21.
