It’s your right to know

The tradition of last minute quizzes, tests and projects has begun, creating stress and headaches for many. Don’t start selling back your books quite yet, and save your notes for a few more days. A couple of more weeks are still to come and these final weeks are the most crucial for many students. Even though we are ready for summer break, professors are trying to give one last “opportunity” for us to pull up our grades, while we see it as an added pressure that is not needed or wanted right before the break.
I think many of you would agree that one last big project in one class would be manageable; however, this is not the case. It seems that all of our classes have at least one more thing to do before final grades. The “one more thing” adds up when the average student takes about fifteen hours, which is equivalent to about five classes. A possible five tests to study for is a lot for any person to manage, yet we are expected to do this with no problem. Remember the thing they warned us about called time management?
There should be a better way to spread out the work over the course of the semester. How hard could it be with about four months worth of classes? Somehow, it is always saved for us until the very end. The class cancellations early in the semester start to add up when there is not enough time for the final chapter to be reviewed, and somehow there is always space for it on the last test.
It’s amazing to me how all of the assignments are magically due the week before finals. It would be great to get a head start on studying for these tests, but most of the time it is just not possible. Teachers say they gave us the assignment on the first day of class when the syllabus was passed out, but most of these projects are a representation of what we learned during the semester. So, how are we supposed to do a project that we have no idea how to complete correctly? Tests can’t be studied for at the beginning of the semester because the material and lecture notes have not yet been presented. So, once again we must wait until about a week or even a few days before the test to study. At this time in the semester the hours become less and less available as finals creep closer and closer.
So much stress is placed on both the teacher and the student. We have to prepare and earn a good grade to pass the class and the professor has to grade every student’s assignment before the cutoff date. In a way, the professors make more work for themselves by assigning everything at the end. Professors tell us we shouldn’t wait until the last minute to do our assignments. They say to plan ahead, but in reality they are doing exactly what they tell us not to do: procrastinate.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 23 2004. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry