With exams quickly approaching, it’s no secret that many students feel extreme strain and pressure on their studying. While I agree that we need assessments to check our comprehension of topics, aren’t tests supposed to accomplish that very task? Why do we need four huge exams every semester? Is it not enough for us to be stretched thin over all of our projects and homework? With all of our units ending before exams, teachers are cramming tests, quizzes, and projects into a span of five days.

Personally, between this week and last, I’ve had an English Project and quiz, a language quiz, a Math quiz and test, and three Science quizzes. This amount of homework and studying is certainly not fair to us, because many students just aren’t yet used to Westminster’s demanding workload. Not to mention that most other middle schools don’t have exams, and the ones that do only have them at the end of the year. 

Whenever we bring this concern up to our teachers, they use the reasoning that this is Westminster’s teaching method. This excuse seems to be used to quiet many complaints about our amount of work, and it’s getting old. Yes, Westminster is a challenging school, but students feel the strain every day with our accelerated curriculum and heavy flow of assignments. 

It isn’t just students that are struggling with exams; a lot of teachers feel the strain of the end of semester as well. Having to write up and grade all of those exams has to be stressful, and many teachers have made it clear they aren’t in favor of them either. 

To conclude, exams have little to no effect on our overall comprehension and are enjoyed by no one. We as a student population would like to have them reduced to only once a school year.