Margot Mather ’17

You hear midterm stress before you see it.

The tapping of nervous feet, the violent scribbling of trig identities and derivatives and occasional sniffles as tears well up around the eyes.

While many students advocate to push these midterms before break in order to enjoy their holiday vacations more, there are two reasons why this has never been the case: Staples shouldn’t penalize those who stay home and want to study, and high school classes are far from the design of college classes.

Unfortunately, I will not be lounging on a beach chair in Hawaii, or skiing a double black in Colorado for the next week. I’ll be taking it easy in Westport and soaking up the chilling temperatures.

fortunately for me, I am able to make good use of the time that we have over break and get a head start in preparing for the omnipresent midterm exams that come shortly after break. I always find this is a way to ease myself into midterms instead of cramming stressful study sessions of intense, brain-cell draining agony.

Why should the studious homebody be punished?

While yes, I’ll reserve some time to catch up on some much needed sleep, if we are given this time, we should be able to spend it how we want, and for some, that means preparing for exams.

In this break, many college students are returning home with no burden of upcoming exams on the horizon as we do.

However, college students are able to finish their courses prior to break, and they should be rewarded with a completely stress-free week at home as a result. What many high schoolers don’t realize is that college students are able to achieve by early December what it takes already accelerated classes at Staples until May to achieve.

While we Staples students undoubtedly work extremely hard leading up to break, none of us will fit in enough material to substantiate that covered at the midway point of our classes to warrant such exams before break.

Many of my teachers are relying on the short time we have following break to squeeze in a final unit, and of course give a few days to review over four months of material.

The way our classes are scheduled logically makes sense to ensue midterms after break.