While the anticipation of summer rolls around during the end of the year, so does finals season. While every student has to deal with some form of finals, not all finals are created equal.

For freshmen, finals can feel like a shock. The transition from middle school to high school is overwhelming in and of itself, and adding a week filled with countless major assessments can feel unbearable.

On the flip side, juniors have a different look on finals week. By junior year, they are typically more familiar with the end-of-year stress of exams, but the pressure is higher. Coming straight off of AP exams and with the pressure of college application nearing the corner, juniors often feel the worst amount of stress of all. Hannah Bubb ‘27 agrees that junior year finals season “seems to be by far the worst.”

Some classes opt for finals that are just like any other unit test, while others have cumulative tests that cover the content of the entire year. I personally find that cumulative tests are the worst final of them all, because students are expected to recall and relearn content from the entirety of the school year, while managing other finals.

However, other classes, generally humanities-based classes, feature different types of finals. Presentations, discussions, papers, or long-term assignments are growing increasingly popular amongst teachers and students alike. I personally am a big fan of some of these projects, especially when they get introduced weeks before Finals Week, because I can get ahead on and submit them before Finals Week. 

After AP season, most AP classes have projects instead of tests, although a select few other classes have these as well. In my opinion, projects are another much more fun and less stressful way of showing your learning at the end of the school year. Sydney Briand ‘28 affirms, saying that “projects are by far my favorite type of final.”

In my opinion, finals week is more of a measure of how much stress students can handle in a short period of time than a measure of the learning that’s occurred over the course of the school year. Rather than a test of knowledge, finals are a test of endurance, with even the students who are the best at time management struggling to find enough time.

While student experiences differ when it comes to finals, something that everyone can agree on is that the best feeling in the world is being done with finals and realizing that it’s summer.