One final for a class is more effective than multiple

As the end of the semester approaches, the communal stress of campus is felt by everyone. Students are checking grades, preparing for final essays and final projects and professors are trying to get all the semester’s grades in on time.

the start and end of the semester, perceived stress and test anxiety both go down, but burnout goes up. At first, this seems like a good thing. Less stress because of exams is positive, but the most logical reason for it is upsetting: students stop caring.

THEA WELTZIN Illustrator

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Among the final essays, projects and exams are a few cases in which finals and final projects are both being given. In those cases, students are overwhelmed and often pick one final over the other to give thorough attention to, while the other assignment receives less attention and less high quality work.

According to a study from the peer-reviewed journal Health Promotion Practice, stress in college students fluctuates depending on the topic. Between

By the end of the semester, students have already been through the wringer. You’ve at least taken one other exam, and turned in a few projects or assignments here or there. That causes stress. When 13 or 14 weeks have passed, and classes are wrapping up, some students are resigned to their fate. There are rare stories of students saving a grade with a class, but there are more stories of students failing out of classes because of finals.

We are not asking for finals to be done away with entirely. It’s still useful to have an assessment or culmination of a class’

Cry when you feel like

Mental health is important for students to do well academically and in other aspects of life. A great way we can better support ourselves is by crying when we know we need to cry instead of suppressing our tears.

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From a young age, many are taught that they shouldn’t cry when they are upset, whether it’s an attempt at being comforting with a, “Don’t cry honey,” or a threat made like, “Keep crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.” When we are children, the things consistently taught and normalized tend to become a big part of how we carry ourselves as adults.

Holding in our true emotions, like our sadness and anger, is very unhealthy. It builds within us and grows into animosity towards ourselves and/or others. A lot of the time we don’t realize that we’ve internalized unprocessed negative emotions and we begin to project them in unhealthy ways. It is important for us to process our emotions in the moment that we’re feeling them. It can be so hard when you feel like you just don’t have the time, the space, the energy or sometimes even the ability. But those little moments of effort slowly make way for it to be more natural.

Whether you believe in a God always being with you or not, or a loved one always being with you or not, you can be sure that the one person you will forever have to live with is yourself. For a lot of people, it is hard to be alone with themselves. Sometimes that means being without distractions or addictive substances. A lot of times, those become the coping mechanisms. Instead of healing, it causes you to suppress your emotions and makes unhealthy coping mechanisms more of a habit. That makes work at the end of the semester. But having multiple assignments count towards a single final grade is detrimental to students’ mental health.

Different kinds of final grades have different uses and purposes. A final exam works well in a STEM class, because oftentimes in those courses, answers are often correct or wrong in a binary sense. An essay makes sense in an English or creative writing course, because the classes are built around writing. Final projects are perfect for art students. Assigning both final projects and final essays, or a project and an exam confuses and stresses students.

It can also take away the importance of one final by assigning two of them. Students are prepared for one final per class. When a class assigns them two, one obviously has to be put aside, it really hard to connect with yourself. Wherever you are in your healing journey, the smallest moment of effort could be life-changing. and another must become the main focus. Professors who assign multiple finals should know that it’s almost a guarantee that most students will prioritize one final over the other.

Your body is always talking to you to tell you what it needs. When you start making an effort to listen, it becomes easier and eventually you’ll know what you need emotionally, mentally or physically almost instantly. Sometimes when you’re angry, you just need to let yourself cry.

Some may not have the ability to get their waterworks started. That’s normal. It’s harder to physically cry when your body is so used to suppressing the act of crying. It’s OK to find something to help you get your tears out like listening to sad songs or watching a sad movie. As the master of your mental, physical, and emotional being, it is your duty to yourself to care for yourself that way. No one can take care of you the way that you can.

If professors want to ensure they’re measuring their students’ knowledge of the course, then they should do so in the most efficient way possible. The professor saying, “This is the final, summative assessment, to show all you have learned in the class in one grade,” followed with, “Also, here is another final, summative assessment to show all you have learned in one grade,” is repetitive and counterintuitive to the concept of finals. This May, if professors could show some grace and some understanding, it would be greatly appreciated. Besides, it’s less grading on their part.

Thank

A lot of times our tears make other people uncomfortable in a sense of it being an inconvenience to them. That’s where we hear, “It’s OK, don’t cry,” or, “That situation isn’t worth crying over.” No one should try to dictate your tears. No one else has to live with your thoughts, emotions, mental health problems or anything else that comes with you being you. Therefore, no one should allow their own discomfort with your emotions to keep you from the emotional release that you’re entitled to as a human being.

A big issue that keeps a lot of people from crying out their emotions is invalidation. You are valid in what you feel, you just need to handle those feelings in the healthiest way possible. The way you feel will affect the way that you perform in life. It is easier to thrive academically when you’re feeling good mentally and emotionally.

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