Tests, quizzes, essays, seminars, and standardized tests – no matter how many honors/AP classes you take or don’t take, no high school student escapes these stressors. Most students have at least one test per week and are constantly trying to keep their grades up.

The last week of the first semester at Ridge High School was also known as the “week of hell,” according to Albert Wu ’18, who states, “Since it was the end of the marking period there was at least one test or quiz every day. This happens at the end of every marking period, so we all were expecting it.” Most student feel especially stressed at the end of each marking period, so what if there was a way to reduce this constant pressure students feel throughout the quarter?

Having midterms and finals would lower the stress which all the students have at Ridge throughout the year because it would mean more study time and fewer tests. Although the Class of 2015 was the last to take midterms and finals at Ridge, the Class of 2016 did not escape quarterlies in their freshman year.

Clare Halsey ‘16 elaborates, “All the kids in the Class of 2015 and earlier liked midterms and finals better than quarterlies. Quarterlies came up really quickly and teachers weren’t allowed to dedicate any time to reviewing for them. Teachers would integrate normal tests and quizzes right up to the day before the quarterly, and also immediately after. The goal was to decrease the stress level of midterms and finals, but midterms and finals allowed for actual review time and for the opportunity to learn how to study for large exams.”

Reinstating midterms would not only lower the stress of a test or quiz every week, but would also help teach students better study habits. For example, Honors Algebra 2 students had a test similar to a midterm this year. It was a normal test covering all the chapters the students had covered until winter break. Normally, the students did all their studying in one night, but when they had to study for the midterm they split up their studying over a span of a few days. Without midterms, most students will continue to save most of their studying for the last day and not learn the right ways to study. Midterms and finals would help retention of information throughout the year.

In college, the two biggest parts of grades are midterms and finals, and Ridge students will not have had the experience of taking these, so they will not be as good at them as other students who have.

Keith O’Brien from The Boston Globe states, “Final exams are part of the real world…The student entering postgraduate education without skills in taking final exams is at a significant disadvantage.” It’s the practice of taking these exams and studying for them that will make taking them later in life easier.

All in all, midterms and finals may sound horrendous, but they would be helpful to students in the long run because it would help students learn important study skills and retain information better.