THERE ARE TIMES when I miss my school days. But not this week.
This week, you couldn’t pay me to be a student again.
If you’re a high-school student or the parent of one, you already know where this is going. Yes, this is finals week, that wonderful time when you discover how many chapters you didn’t read, how many notes you can’t find, and how many gallons of caffeine it takes to make up the difference.
Whether it’s high school or college, final exams tend to be a week of unrelieved stress. To make matters even crueler, it’s a week that comes right after graduation. There’s nothing like being reminded that other people are being allowed to escape into the real world while you are TRAPPED. Trapped, I tell you! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Sorry. Horror movie flashback. I’m OK now.
I used to hate finals. And I was one of the “good students.” In a way, that made it especially horrible. It’s amazing how your confidence level in a subject can go from 100 to 0 when you add a test, a time limit, and several other quietly panicking students.
In extreme cases, a final can end up testing several other abilities, besides the official subject matter. If listed in a course syllabus, it might look something like this:
ESSAY TEST: “The student will demonstrate upper-level vocabulary skills in filling 12 pages with handwriting, despite having only three facts at his command.”
MULTIPLE CHOICE: “The student will demonstrate her command of random sampling and selection, otherwise known as the ‘eenie-meenie-minie-moe’ method.”
CLASS PRESENTATION/SPEECH: “The student will demonstrate the use of natural rhythms by using the word ‘um’ no less than 13 times in a 90-second period.”
TRUE-FALSE: “The student will demonstrate the ability to recognize ‘heads’ and ‘tails’ on a standard U.S. quarter.”
Makes you yearn for those No. 2 pencils, doesn’t it?
Now that stress isn’t an altogether bad thing. It teaches you how to perform under pressure. It teaches you the importance of preparation. It teaches you that three gallons of Coca-Cola before a 75-minute exam is not the best idea in the world. All useful lessons.
As long as you don’t also learn sleep deprivation. Or chronic anxiety. Or even questionable ethics — one 2002 study found that 74 percent of high school students admitted to cheating on at least one exam over the past year. Stress, like any useful thing, can be taken too far.
In school, a test can seem like everything. This is your grade, possibly your future, hanging over your head in big red letters. With a little perspective, you can see otherwise — but perspective tends to be in short supply in your teens and twenties.
For those still going through test anxiety, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that in the “real world,” you are unlikely to ever take a test again. That’s also the bad news.
Tests are to show what you’ve learned. The real world assumes you already know. You get to prove yourself every day, not just once a semester.
That may sound stressful. It can be, if those are the habits you’ve learned. But it doesn’t have to be.
Again, perspective helps. And it’s a lesson we never stop learning.
An exam is not a future. A wedding is not a marriage. A hiring is not a career. You have to have that initial step, but the real work always comes later.
The stress will never go away entirely, of course. But if you can keep from worrying too much about the milestones, the road itself gets a lot easier to take.
And that’s final.
Scott Rochat’s e-mail address is rochat@emporiagazette.com.