The opinions expressed in these articles are the views of the writer themselves and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the CHS Chronicle.
Tests, quizzes, projects, homework – these are the things that all students think of when they hear the word “school.” These assignments are time-consuming for students and teachers alike, because students have to give up time in order to complete the task instead of doing something else, such as playing Minecraft or learning the Theory of Everything by Stephen Hawking. Teachers especially have to waste time grading the assignments at home instead of doing something else important in their life.
There are times, though, when the work from school is just an easy thing to get rid of – just one assignment out of all classes to do – that can be handled quickly with the other sixteen hours that are not for school classes. But, there are other times when all of the kids and teachers are stressed out from these assignments. Such times happen differently for many year groups, but all of them are common at the end of the first semester and the end of the school year. These periods of time are vital for students to do well on their assignments because since it is the end of the semester, the average grades of each class are being finalized with those assignments. If the students do well on these assignments, it could very much bring their grade a letter up or maintain whatever grade they have, but if they do bad, their grade tanks. Students also do not have all of their sixteen hours to finish the assignments; they have to split between extracurriculars, volunteer work, or sports, and barely have enough time for any hours of sleep.
This is also exhausting for teachers. They are given a few days extra to grade any assignments they have left, and because they give out some final assignments, with so many students to grade, they have to spend hours grading those assignments before that deadline. These assignments in the final hours of the semester are catastrophic, because not only do they have to finish grading the assignments, but there are other factors that they have to add in – students coming in to ask for extra points to bring their final grade a letter up, some unexpected family meeting – they can’t prepare for that.
The final semester is no relaxing opportunity to anyone. Students and teachers both undergo this period at least twice each year. Then what can we do to solve this problem of a huge workload? Well, we can’t do anything about it. The grades have to be put in because they are important for a student to have, because high school GPA is a determinant for college. In order to raise some people’s grades as high as possible, the assignments have to be put in so low-graded students have a chance. The only solution to this is to go through it, deal with the tormenting agony, and get it over with, because once it is over, the stress is over, at least for a little while.