Exams can put a lot of stress on students. However, to combat this, teachers prepare students by any means. This may include making students complete more homework than usual, completing study guides, or even requiring them to do some practice tests.
Annabelle Shephard, a Junior at Lakota West, shared her thoughts on prepping for her exams and if much prep is needed.
“Almost all of my teachers have given me a bunch of study guides and things to look over and be like ‘this is gonna be on the test, this not as much, there’s gonna be a lot of this.’ The issue that comes with that is that it’s still homework, and yes, study should be homework because we don’t have time to study in class…there is so much to do, so much to study and they only gave us about a week maybe to do it because they only gave it a couple of days in advance, so along with the homework we’re still doing it just makes it stressful even if it is helpful”.
When asked about whether or not her past exams have helped her become better adjusted to exam week, “I’m so used to taking the exams themselves now that I know exactly what to do, I know how many mints to bring to make myself focused, I know how to break things up and come back to questions and study questions in case im confused, so yeah I think they have prepared me based on previous exams”
Lakota West teacher Mr. Moorfield has noticed that students are less stressed about them than in past years.
“It seems like the stress level in that regard is pretty consistent with what has been for the student throughout the year since they just have not much extra workload and they got different times throughout the day to build it in…I haven’t noticed a big difference in my particular setting in stress in regards to exams coming up, especially since it’s been lowered from 20% of the overall grade down to 10%.”
Senior Aiden Palo reminds other students to “Study, study study study, that and while I say study a lot, take time to relax because your brain can only process so much at a time and if you overwork it you won’t actually remember all of the knowledge your shoving in. So make sure you have a little bit of time to reprieve to do what you want to do.”
