Finals

Unlike many people, it would seem, I always thought that finals week was the best week of the entire semester. Sure, you often have less work to do the first week (although that's not true too many times), but you also have an entire semester of more and more work coming up.

Once you get to finals week, you're through with the entire class. You've got one more test to take, and there's no way you're cramming all of that information into your head in that little time, so if you didn't work on it all semester long (I didn't), it's too late to start then, so why bother?

You also know, come finals week, that in 7 or so days, you will be _done_, you'll never have to think about any of this stuff again, unless of course you're taking the next course in the sequence. Or need it in the "real world", but who really uses anything they learn in school in the real world?

Now the week /before/ finals week, that's always the painful one. Not only do 3/4 of the classes decide that projects are supposed to be due then, but 3/4 of the classes /also/ have a test that week. Of course, there was the semester that I /assumed/ my huge project was due the week before finals week, and was wrong. Thankfully it was actually due finals week, making my entire finals week just that much more enjoyable.

Once those final projects are in, once the next-to-last batch of tests are taken, finals really don't matter that much anymore. It's really not worth all the effort people put into worrying about doing well and making sure everything is known. So why bother?

However. Since so many people are so incredibly stressed out throughout finals week, I propose the following. All schools should move finals week to the first week of class, allowing all the stress to get done with right away. So few people really start studying until right before their tests anyway, so it can't make that much of a difference on grades, and it would allow students the opportunity to spend the entire semester actually learning, without worrying about that test looming at the end of the semester.

Furthermore, they could use the "final" to show them that they, in fact, have learned many things throughout the session, instilling a great deal of confidence in the many people that are filled instead with worry and fear.

Of course, at that point, I suppose we could start just handing out grades randomly, but then again, I'm not so sure it doesn't happen that way anyway.