It’s that time of year again: midterms. Frustration and confusion seem to be a girl’s best friend and stress lies around every corner. For most of us, midterms can be the biggest pain in the middle of the school year, but to others, like Alana Whitmarsh (’12), midterms are not pointless or useless. “I’ve never viewed midterms as a burden or waste of time.”
Alana Whitmarsh is very experienced with midterms. By taking them in grade school, she already had a sense of what midterms were really like, although high school midterms are very different from grade school exams. During Alana’s freshman year, she attended the National Honors Society study session after school and created study guides from the papers the teachers provided. Overall, her midterms during her freshman year would be considered successful. Freshman year was nothing compared to junior year for Alana. “I added a lot more honors classes to my schedule and the midterms all seemed so overwhelming,” she explained, “However, once I adopted a new studying technique, I got things down. Once finals rolled around, I had things under control.”
The studying technique that worked so well for Alana was a method she learned from friends Ally and Olivia Allegretto. The girls created packets of all the notes, worksheets, and tests they had from the semester and then added the information from the study guide. “It’s extremely helpful having everything together,” Alana admitted. In addition to the packet, Alana also used note cards and was able to manage the stress during her junior year. When asked if she could go back to her freshman year before midterms and say one thing to herself, Alana said she would tell herself, “Don’t stress, they’re not as important as they seem.”
As for freshman, Shannon Tobin, midterms are completely different. She took midterms in grade school but their purpose was just to prepare them for midterms in high school. They only included questions from recent tests. This year is distinctively different for Shannon. “The midterms make me feel a little stressed out and confused in certain areas of certain subjects.” Shannon is also making note cards and using the study guides provided by the teachers as resources to study. She also attended the National Honors Society study session for extra help in specific subjects.
Shannon does understand the importance of midterms but she does not like how they stress out many students and create confusion and frustration. She said, “Midterms make studying difficult because its hard to study all the information from the beginning of the year.”