The end of the semester is approaching. So what does that mean?
Final exams.
Are final exams necessary? Do students actually need them?
Being a college student can be stressful enough, and having a final exam will just add unwanted stress.
According to IQ careers, science and education experts say that final exams are a bad idea.
The stress and tension that students deal with regularly can have bad impacts on their mental state. Some of them become sick after months of the continuous learning process.
In the Daily Collegian, associate professor of Biobehavioral Health and the Director of the Stress & Health Lab Jennifer Graham Engeland also said stress can manifest and affect health and well-being.
“A common phenomenon is negative mood, anxiety, sadness and anger, which when prolonged by rumination can lead to exacerbated psychological stress responses,” Engeland said.
The end of the semester should be a peaceful time, not stressing over material that was learned months before and some students believe that having a final exam is a waste of time.
According to The A Blast it’s hard for students to hold on to material learned from the beginning of the year.
Final exams force students to go back and memorize material that they’ve already learned. Then there are the students that are having trouble in their classes or class now have to learn a semester of work in one week, which causes more stress on the student.
Researchers from The A Blast also say that final exams are a questionable way to see what students have learned, and in the real world, students will not be able to take multiple-choice tests in the classroom to prove that they know the material.
Students need to be challenged and will need to overcome adversity to succeed in life, and schools should take the finals as an opportunity to teach those lessons to their students.
With that being said, are final exams even worth the stress?
According to The Daily Wildcat board member of the American institution of stress, Dr. Cynthia Ackrill said that “the stress that college students go through during final exam periods has both immediate and long-term negative effects on the brain. Because Getting less than five hours of sleep five nights in a row Is equivalent to being legally drunk.”
Ackrill also says that finals push some students into a stress equivalent of a drinking binge.
Eliminating final exams will ultimately provide students with a more stress-free experience when wrapping up their academic semester.
