When I saw my cousins at the beginning of June, I expected they would have a couple more days of classes, followed by a week of finals to bring their sophomore and junior years of high school to a close. I was shocked to find out that their school year was ending much earlier, as they did not have finals. Many of their classes just ended after taking a test on the last chapter of material or handing in that final paper. There were no final exams. The school decided to get rid of them and let teachers decide upon an appropriate assessment for their course. But no exam week, as they put too much stress on the students.
As a rising junior at an elite university, I hate finals week just as much as the next student. No matter how much time and effort goes into preparation, it is hard to truly feel "ready" for a two-hour comprehensive exam that can determine up to 50% of your final grade. It is absolutely stressful. But at the same time, if the work was put in throughout the semester and one knows how to manage his or her time, finals should be easy.
In some ways, finals week is an additional incentive to do the outside reading, review notes and create study guides throughout the semester. While I managed to keep up with and do well in all of my high school courses, I crammed for finals. I would stay up the entire weekend before just making study guides, thinking that would be enough. And oftentimes, it was enough to keep my semester grades where I wanted them. However, I retained little to no information from these courses.
If solely measuring knowledge retained from a course, a comprehensive, sit-down final exam may not be the best form of assessment. In the humanities and social sciences, it is often best to respond to a prompt with the information from the course within an extended period of time. This could be having a week to propose a solution to a problem in society, or to type a paper of a common theme in literature. But in math and the natural sciences, it may be best to have a sit-down final exam as a means of assessment.
Final exams are by no means the most effective way to assess grades. But at the time being, they do much more than stress out students. Final exams allow students to perform under pressure, prioritize and, ultimately, apply effort and knowledge to achieve a desired outcome. Finals week may not be an enjoyable time, but it teaches students both how to learn and how not to learn. And most importantly, finals week teaches students to push through stress to perform their best, both on the exam itself and whatever obstacles they may encounter on future, nonacademic endeavors.
