Finals straw

I’m done with finals.

It’s not that I have literally finished all of my finals. I’m just done with the concept of finals.

Cumulative final exams are not the right way to test students.

Cramming exams that cover 16 weeks worth of knowledge into one week is foolish.

Students, especially freshmen, often have classes that cover vastly different material.
A finals schedule could include calculus, psychology, biology and history. The University expects us to dive in to all that at the same time, while every class demands perfection.

It’s not feasible for a student to show their best knowledge of the material when they have one week to prove they know four different disciplines.

Every year, students flock to the library for the first time the weekend before finals to gain a semester’s worth of knowledge. That’s senseless, and makes it unclear whether IU wants people to learn like that.

We need to change the system so that semester-long procrastination isn’t possible.

I have a simple alternative: no cumulative exams. Midterms should cover the first eight weeks, and finals should cover the second eight weeks.

Switching to this layout would cut down on the stress and chaos of finals week. It might add to the resonance of the material as well.

When I’m studying for 16 weeks of material the week before my final, I don’t remember any of it as soon as I step out of the test room. With a test that covered only eight weeks, I could actually remember what happened the month before in class rather than having to do my entire assignment from the beginning of the year over again just to gain a slight memory of what it was about.

Testing a student over 16 weeks of material is not inherently harsh. But when a student has five different classes, their finals schedule becomes unforgiving.

A schedule with a midterm covering the first eight weeks and a final covering the second eight weeks only has positive effects. It would force professors to be more concise and more pointed with their teaching.

As of now, this alternative schedule is just a dream.

In reality, I have to go back to studying for finals, remembering what the essay I read in early September was about.

It’s going to be a long weekend.

­— lewicole@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Cole Lewis on Twitter @ColeThenLewis.