As I think back on all my years of education, I have had to take some sort of final exam at semester's end. Only in high school and middle school were there a few exceptions. If your grades and attendance matched the specific criteria required by the school you were eligible for "exemption". Being "Exempt" means that you are free of obligation or liability imposed on others. So basically, if you had As and Bs and didn't miss between two to three days in a semester you started every break early. If you had a C in a class the you were only allowed to miss one day. Of course in college it would be harder to judge by grades, but GPA would be the best alternative in use. If you have attended college you would know that finals are the absolute ENEMY. With that being said college students who are able to maintain prolific attendance and have the grade point average to match, an exemption policy should be in place.
A typical college semester is five months, and a college year is two total semesters not including summer school. That is 10 months with only a few breaks between. That time consumption could easily be put into a full time job, but instead you have constant book work with days and days of class. Just encase you are not aware of the struggle that is being a college student i will share a few. The first struggle is living in a dorm room, sharing everything that you have with multiple other people. Although you do have a place to sleep every night their are way more desirable places to be than surrounded by men in a building. The second struggle is book prices. Once you finally accept the fact of living with a roommate, one thing that will remain the same is over priced textbooks! The most i have payed for a single textbook was $272 and only for one class. If you can afford the books and pay for them just hope that your professor actually makes you open it. After you have gathered another strength to endure the cafeteria pizza, bad WiFi, , and random rain down pours through the course of an semester you deserve a reward.
This reward should be more than a test, at that point a test is just a big laugh in your face. This courageous student should be "Exempt" and relieved of all duties from the semester.Of course if students do not meet the required guidelines, then the penalty would only be to take your final. Not only would this reward students for working hard, but also encourage students to be more interactive during the semester with teachers and classmates. I see college exemption as a way to bring out the best in each student while showing that the education system cares about its students.
