Finals week can be foreboding and scary to many of the students at any school around the country. Finals being many important tests that can intensely affect your grade, it can understandably be stressful for many students and create a sense of urgency like no other time in the year.

“It can be somewhat stressful,” junior Marissa Sipe said. “I try to get a lot of it done, but I have work and other activities and it’s hard to find time, so normally I’m just sleep deprived”

Finals week leads many students to creating new ways of pushing themselves through the week itself, as well as the days leading up to finals. Many students can struggle to get many assignments and late work turned in before the deadlines set for the finals.

“I encourage that everybody study hard, … you have to understand most of the work and you’ll do well” junior Caleb Elliott said

While this can be a stressful time, it also offers a lot of opportunities for students to get a look at all the work they may have missed or made mistakes in, and often are allowed to turn in a lot of late work before finals. Many teachers are more forgiving towards the end of semesters and look forward to giving their students more chances to improve their grades before they are finalized.

“That part can be a little bit stressful, making sure you get everything done, I’ll probably be grading things all next week, so I don’t have to finish 6 classes of stuff on Friday,” Hippe said.

This year finals are coming up very quickly, starting almost immediately after coming back for break. This means that many more students are likely to not feel the rush as much until it’s right on top of them, and that’s going to have to be a real wake up call to many students. It’s piled on a lot of work for students to prepare for finals and for teachers to prepare for students’ finals

“I have a bunch of final reviews to do and a lot of material to go over, just look over the stuff and study it, so I can hopefully get a good grade,” Sipe said.

It’s not only students preparing for finals of course, staff and teachers have to do the same. All of this constant work and planning for finals with no real time to stop and take breaks throughout the week can create a need for different ways to relieve the pressure for students and teachers alike. Many teachers have to prepare the test for their subject, grade all of the late work coming in, and work with students and other staff to coordinate all this, while still creating lessons and teaching them up to finals.

“For world history we mostly use the same final with some changes, so that’s not too hard,” history teacher William Hippe stated. “I did start teaching a new class this year and Mr. Gebhard and I have looked over that final, it’s probably the biggest thing I’ve done since we got back.”

Although they are stressful, they are stressful for good reason. It’s a large part of students’ grades for the semester and is the final hard deadline for a lot of late work. It can be stressful through the week and leading up to finals, but by the time it’s over, it can be a big load off the shoulders knowing that your grades are finalized and the year is already halfway over.