Tests, concerts, sports games, and projects all in one week? Sounds like end of third term to me: An overwhelming five days of due dates and late night study sessions, which brings to mind the question, aren’t there assigned testing days for each subject? The testing day schedule is designed to prevent us from having too many tests, quizzes, or papers on one day. It is hardly effective, however, because it seems that everything is due on one day that week.

As I walked to my classes, I didn’t see the usual laughing and smiling people conversing. Instead, I saw worried and concerned faces; students were asking each other questions about their tests, telling of their long nights, and complaining of their exhaustion. The Media Center was packed with studying zombies and last minute paper writers.

The continuous build up of work only presented everyone with a continuous build up of stress. Apparently, as students, we are allowed to have a maximum of three tests on one day. That is potentially three hours of testing after what is most likely a deficit of sleep, not to mention the fact that it is very hard to study thoroughly for three major tests in one night. This creates exhaustion, empty minds, and glazed over eyes the next day. Consequently, this prevents students from performing at their best. There is no room for argument; this process is absolutely too difficult for students to handle more than once. But this seems to be a reoccurring theme at the end of every term.

Imagine this average day of a high school student: Wake up at 6 AM, go to school for nearly 7 hours, attend some after school activity (sports, singing or acting groups, clubs, etc.), finally head home, already exhausted. But this isn’t even the end of it. The student still needs to eat dinner and do his or her homework, which puts them to bed late on a normal night. Now add in a concert, maybe a late sports game, and half a dozen tests, and you have yourself a recipe for disaster. It is amazing that students don’t go insane!

Having a long and important concert the last week of a term is just an example of scheduling adversity. However, many of the tests or papers we had could have been spread out more efficiently. This poor example of scheduling does not necessarily teach kids how to prioritize, but demonstrates a great example of how sometimes our teachers are just as capable of procrastinating and falling behind as their students are. I understand that some tests are meant for the end of the term, but others could have been planned better so that we took them a week or even a couple days earlier. The end of the term is such a rush to get everything done that it shatters people’s hopes of improving their grades.

So is it too much? Is there too much pressure on students at the end of term? I think yes, and this is why as a school we need to work harder to change some due dates and test days so that students have a better chance of succeeding, and so they aren’t always running on empty.