Finals week, the last chance to turn that B into an A and the last opportunity to truly give it your all. But the stamina for students giving it their all has definitely run low for many while attending virtual schooling due to restrictions caused by the pandemic.
If there was a time to make exceptions to the systems of traditional schooling, it’s now! Students should be given the choice to exempt their final exam if they’re passing with an acceptable grade. This removes stress on the student and allows them to focus on other areas or classes that actually need to be improved rather than reinforcing concepts one last time just to make another A.
The pandemic has also caused some professors to randomly choose time slots for final exams rather than getting feedback on what most of the class would prefer the time to be. This problem has become a major inconvenience to many students rather than providing structure. I understand that it’s impossible to please every student as everyone’s daily lives vary drastically. However, just offering that choice to the students allows teachers to be more considerate even if they do choose to continue having finals.
Removing the requirement for finals also aids the very possible situation of students who were just exposed to COVID-19 or just recently getting over it. During the semester, students have had to talk with their professors to ask for extensions or make-ups due to being sick or mourn the loss of a family member who passed from COVID-19. And although many professors have allowed students to take that needed time, who’s to say those same situations couldn’t occur during finals week? There’s no extension during that time. It’s either get it done or fail and in a situation like this where the whole world is being affected, a student should never have to worry about the state of their grade because something happened last minute that they could not control.
Although schools express how they have students’ best interest at heart during this entire pandemic, care so much about students’ mental health, and understand that we are in unfortunate times, one can still see there’s an underlying agenda that’s being followed that completely disregards those statements.