For college students, twice a year a week comes along that’s jammed packed with papers, exams, and even a helping of over dramatics. It’s commonly known around college campuses as ‘Finals Week’ where students cram in study sessions as well as a boat load of coffee and energy drinks. Speaking of caffeinated beverages, it’s important to keep track of how much caffeine you're consuming. While smaller amounts will in fact improve focus and help keep you awake, excessive amounts can actually bring about unwanted stress which I'd imagine is the absolute last thing students would want to have happen.
For some, the week might just be a couple days long, but those two days might involve a marathon of up to three test in a 24 hour period. Others might have a more spaced out schedule that last the whole week. Either way it’s definitely an event students do not look forward to.
After having gone through 3 years worth of this process, in my opinion I must say I’ve never found ‘Finals Week’ to be the tornado storm of fear and stress popular opinion would suggest it is. Now I must admit, I’ve been lucky enough to have some pretty laid back finals weeks over the course of the past few years. Believe it or not, I even manage to escape the 2016 spring semester without having to take any finals!
However, I’ve also had my share of finals weeks that included a series of test and papers jammed into 3 or 4 day periods and I’m still not buying the hype. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think 'Finals Week' is easy, but I also don’t to find it be something worth stressing over. In fact when you really think about, it’s honestly pretty stupid.
For example, the basic idea of having so many exams, papers and/or projects clustered into such a short period of time seems like a completely awful idea. By having so much to do and remember in so little time, no matter how much one may study, it’s seem nearly inevitable that your grade won’t be the as good as it would without as big of workload to stay on top of. This is especially true if your finals are cumulative as opposed to just being based on material taught in the second half of the semester. That’s almost a whole two months more worth of material to review. Now I’m not ultimately suggesting that ‘Finals Week’ should be done away with completely (although it would be nice), but it's logic does certainly raise some questions.
With that being said, ‘Finals Week’ does have a legitimate reasoning for existing (other than to unleash terror on students’ lives). It’s general purpose is to be a reflection of how much material we know from the course that was taught throughout the semester, but as I just mentioned, trying to cram in all that information for a number of classes pretty much seems to be a disaster waiting to happen. Therefore, I can see why some people get themselves all worked up and stressed out despite not doing so myself.
Perhaps without even realizing it, the actual reason for ‘Finals Week’ existence isn’t mainly to mess with students’ grades, but rather to put them through a stress test of balancing so many tasks as once. A skill that can be very beneficial to be good at while progressing towards adulthood. Overall, whether you’re someone who’s laid back and just let’s ‘Finals Week’ take it course or you want to rip your hair out then take a nap til the weeks over, at the end of day it’s existence is justifiable (despite being so widely hated).
