by Sam C.
As the weather warms, stress in high schoolers rise with the dreaded final exams.
Midterm and final exams are a staple in most American high schools, the tests compiling all learned material from the semester into a two-hour-long test which becomes ten percent of the student’s grade. This year, and the two years prior, Duxbury High School has decided to not have students take the exam due to COVID-19.
With this absence, an important question has come up: Are finals necessary? Will we even have them?
The answer is yes, students will still have finals. When asked if the cancellation of midterms would lead to the cancellation of finals as well, Principal Donovan said, “Not a chance.”
He went on to add that seniors will still have their exemptions, and the only reason that midterms were exempt was due to the two hundred absences in the five days that followed winter break due to COVID-19.
Despite finals being a go, the bigger question still remains: are they necessary?
“I do,” said Mr. Aukerman. “As much as I know that might not be the popular view, everything I know of university life is that there are still a vast majority of courses, especially first and second year at school, that still have midterms and finals. So it’s a skill.”
The psychology teacher believes it helps students, especially the seniors, prepare for what college life can look like.
Duxbury students would tend to disagree.
“I don’t think we need them,” senior Kiley P. said. “It makes us incredibly stressed. We went two years without them and were fine, why do we still need to take them?”
For the past two years due to COVID 19, most high schools, including Duxbury, have taken finals off of their students’ plates, whether it be due to online learning or high amounts of cases.
For some, though, this will be their first time taking the exams, and anxiety is through the roof.
“I’m definitely nervous. We haven’t had them for so long, and now that they’re coming back and we’re kinda being thrown into them it’s very nerve racking.” sophomore Bird K. said.
For the freshman and sophomores, this will be their first year taking the exams. Duxbury will continue proctoring midterms and finals through the 2022-2023 school year.
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