Last month students and staff learned that GHS was short on school days so the administration decided to change exam days to regular school days. In years past exam week was divided into three days and depending on your schedule you would either have 2 or 3 exams per day, sometimes less if you had a study hall. 

What myself and my classmates do not understand is why this was not figured out prior to the school year starting, rather than three weeks before exams?

On Wednesday I had part one of four exams including Physics, AP Language, AP Psychology, and Algebra 2, as well as part 2 of my Economics project. I definitely felt overworked by the end of the school day, and it seemed to me that others were too because of the extreme increase in students sleeping in classes after exams.

On Thursday I had three exams, while we finished up homework in one class, and in AP Language we practiced for our multiple choice exam on Friday. 

By the end of Thursday my classmates and myself were sick of exams, I had taken three that day and many of my classmates had five or six due to their schedules.

Last year as a sophomore I had only five exams over three days, which allowed me to split my study time between the classes and not cram in all the study time for one day, struggling to remember what I had studied/ learned the night prior.

This year I had to study every night for multiple exams/classes, making many of my classmates lose sleep and become exhausted over the lack of sleep and anxiety of being completely overwhelmed by the exam amount each day.

Who I feel most bad for though is the freshman and sophmores; because so many underclassmen do not have study halls. Or electives, that didn’t have exams, so many had five or six exams a day. When I was a freshman I thought six exams over three days was stressful, so I cannot imagine the stress that freshman and sophmores went through taking all their exams split each day in all their classes.

Overall I believe that this exam schedule was an overall failure and a horrible idea. I think this was an absolute disaster, not only for the students but for the staff as well for the quick turnaround time in grading their exams. I am urging the administration to change the exam schedule back to what it used to be, or as close to it as they can be in compliance with DPI’s minute requirements.