Finals week is coming up for the first semester back in school full time after a year and a half of online school. Students in the class of 2023 have completed only one week of formal finals in their time as high schoolers. That one week was during the first semester of their freshman year, which many would agree was a fairly easy week consisting of a few tests and half days. Now juniors, class of 2023 will have to take finals for all 8 classes in arguably the most difficult year of high school, with very little prior experience with this form of testing. 

Many juniors feel that having a uniform finals week this year is inappropriate.

“So many people are taking AP classes during junior year, but we don’t have the work ethic because we’ve been cheating our way through online school for the last year. And then we have to take these big tests. I can’t do it,” says Brynli Clausse. Students feel very strongly about finals this week, and the overwhelming emotion is worry. 

“I have such bad test anxiety coming back and I never was anxious about a test before… We’re anxious coming back into the year anyway cause it’s been so long, and now we’re more anxious because we don’t know what we’re doing,” says Jaden Andrews. Students feel that they’re less prepared for big tests than ever before, even with the whole semester being in person. 

When polled 93.8% of juniors shared that they were anxious for finals week. And 100% of students said they didn’t feel prepared for finals week. 56% of juniors said that they felt it was unfair for juniors to have to take a full week of finals when their only prior experience was from the first semester of freshman year. 37.5% of students said that it’s just how school is but collectively 87.5% of students were worried about their finals dropping their grades. 

As a whole students aren’t sure what a better alternative to finals week would be, but they feel that the unique situation the class of 2023 has been put in, hasn’t been considered by the administration. Students feel behind from the learning they lacked during their freshman and sophomore year, as well as a feeling of uncertainty about the learning they’ve gone through this year. Juniors Emelia Puerta and Jayden Onchi both feel that they’re prepared for some of their classes, but not prepared for others. This could be attributed to a lack of student focus and dedication but juniors argue that they’re doing what they can with what they’ve been given. 

Finals week is a hard time during all four years of high school but juniors are especially struggling this year. With so little prior experience and very little confidence going into finals week, many juniors feel they were given an unfair shot to be successful during finals week, and that the grades that are going to go on their semester 1 transcript don’t reflect that type of student they are.