Finals.  The next week of my life will be consumed with studying for tests and then studying for finals and then studying some more.  And the reason for this?  I didn’t study for 10 minutes over 16 of the 17 days of  winter break.  In fact, I don’t know a single person who did anything other hang out, vacation, and actively avoid anything to do with school…and on the last day of break we spent the entire day freaking out about all of the things we failed to do.  Oh, I know I should have worked on it earlier, don’t get me wrong.  But at the same time, I refuse to feel sorry that I actually enjoyed my winter break instead of freaking out about school the whole time.

Naturally, when I went to start working on that last day of break I had forgotten everything that I learned.  The homework, the take home quizzes, the essays, all of them were mixed together in my mind.  I stared at the blank pages on Word, and the math problems and I realized that my mind was blanker than those pages and that none of these problems meant anything to me.  It was then that I got angry at the system.  And okay, maybe it was my fault for procrastinating until the last possible second.  But, maybe the school year should have been planned better.  Especially this year, when finals are only one week after coming back from break.  There just isn’t enough time to review for everything in every class.

My only saving grace is the three day weekend before finals, which is when I plan on doing most of my studying.  Super fun weekend ahead…not!

History teacher, Joe Edwards said he understands both sides of the issue, “Having finals before winter break, in theory, would be great; however, I don’t know how that would be possible without either having a shorter 1st semester or starting school a few weeks earlier in August.”

Personally, I would be fine starting a week earlier in August if it meant I would be able to spend my winter break stress free, or at least guilt free about not being stressed out.  And plenty of students agree with me.  Enough people, in fact, that student government plans on taking action.  Although the details of their proposal have not yet been revealed, it has become clear that student government wishes to move the date of finals forward just as much as everyone else.  Here’s to hoping that this plan get’s passed.

“I just feel like if finals were moved forward to before break everyone would be able to enjoy those two weeks more, you know?  If we had them earlier all the material would not have been introduced yet and we wouldn’t have any crazy homework over break,” said junior, Melanie Berman.

I concur wholeheartedly with Berman.  It isn’t that I don’t understand why this is complicated, but I feel like getting good grades would definitely be more possible if we took finals before taking two weeks off of school, and thinking.

Alternatively, I’m sure we would all be open to not having finals at all.