Why do people go crazy over finals?

College Life
1

<p>I know the importance of finals, but I have hardly studied for any final in my two years of college, and I have always done very well on them. I always do the math heading into the finals and know what is the worst grade I can possibly get to get the grade I want/need for each course. I don’t mean to be arrogant, but I usually don’t have to do much work to get those grades. Most of the finals seem to be just like any other exam from earlier in the semester, anyway.</p>

<p>It could just be me or my major, but why do people get so crazy for the finals? I actually find the week to be quite relaxing and comforting.</p>

2

<p>Erm, well I’m a first year student, and I took only 2 finals for my first term. They were kind of annoying and the fact that they were a huge chunk of the grade for the classes was kind of unsettling, but yeah, I have to agree that they were for the most part just like any other examination–for the classes that I took at least.</p>

<p>People probably just aren’t sure of what to expect… I mean, finals pretty much determine what grade you get in the course.</p>

3

<p>For some, it could be the difference between passing and failing. Don’t judge…too hard.</p>

4

<p>And likewise, for the high-achieving students, it’s the matter of how much their grades drop. If you already have, say, a 97 in a class and you’d like a 98 for a 4.0, you actually have to nearly ace it, and if you don’t, you watch all your hard work slip away from you. In this case, it’s nerve-racking to have a single test embody your collective ambitions and effort.</p>

5

<p>I actually do currently have a 3.99 gpa, but I am able to calculate what I need to score to get the highest grade I can possibly get. If I have a final worth, let’s say, 20% of my overall grade in a course, and I can get about a score of 76% in the class without even taking the final and I have not scored below 90% on any exam in that course the entire semester, why go nuts over the final. If I ace the final, I will get an A. If I get the lowest score I have ever received on a test in that subject I will get an A. I think I am a good judge of what I need to do, so I eliminate stress by doing the bare minimum. </p>

<p>I am not saying that I’m a slacker and don’t care. I just make strategic decisions.</p>

6

<p>I agree, honestly. I’m an English+History major so I’m used to having periods of lots of work-- in almost every class, we have, say, 4 papers due per semester so they’re spaced out about the same which leads to 4 times a year where I have like 5 essays due at the same time. Finals is just one more time like that. Plus I get the added bonus of everyone freaking out about studying while I get to write the essays at my leisure.</p>

7

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<p>It’s your major. Switch to engineering and see how your non-studying works out for you.
You know what they say, if something is easy it’s generally not worth much.</p>

8

<p>What is your major?</p>

9

<p>As someone with a 3.9+ GPA, my finals make or break me. I’ve had a terrible semester–I’m in a special one semester introductory program for my business school, and they group everyone into “teams” that do large group assignments all semester. Of course, what sort of group did I get? Well, I’ll leave the adjective to your discretion. Point is, I’ve had to do about five times as much work this semester than in any previous semester (and I’m a Junior, so that’s not good), and just yesterday, I had a group final for one of my classes worth 35% of my grade. It was, quite frankly, awful. And if we didn’t score at least an 80, then an entire semester worth of (literally) perfect individual work goes right down the drain along with my GPA. </p>

<p>It’s stressful. It’s frustrating. You spend months working and learning and studying, and for most classes, everything comes down to three hours. And people can, and do, blow it. All the time. Four months of hard work–Poof. Gone. Just like that. For students really intent on maintaining the highest academic standard possible (and at my college, that’s a lot of people), final exams are probably the most stressful thing you face in your entire college career–for some, even more stressful than landing jobs or internships. Because it’s personal. Your grades are a reflection of your work ethic, your intelligence, etc. So to someone who strives to get the highest grades possible, even a “small” failure is devastating. </p>

<p>Now, I’m not saying this is a healthy mentality. It isn’t. By a long shot. But for a lot of hard working students, that’s the way it is. </p>

<p>By the way, I do the math, too. Unfortunately, it’s not always pretty. I have a final tomorrow that counts for 75% of my grade. It counts for so much because the professor in question pushes her students harder than most of them can possibly keep up with during the semester. She gives “quizzes” where the averages are consistently F’s. She gives us case work far beyond what introductory level students can actually complete successfully. She does this to make us learn the material. She does this to make us think and apply and not regurgitate information. So when you get to the final, you have learned the material. Well. And she’s a great professor, by the way. But I’m not going to lie. 75% of my grade depends on me getting an 80 or above (which is her final A cutoff, by the way, to give you an idea of the difficulty of this class) on that 3 hour exam tomorrow. And yes, I am stressing and very worried. Especially because this is the introductory class for my major. </p>

<p>So, sorry for the rant. But people have a lot of reasons for stressing over finals, and a lot of them are perfectly reasonable. It’s nice when I don’t have to stress over finals (and sometimes I don’t), but sometimes I do. That’s college for you.</p>

10

<p>Does it matter? Does it really affect you? Maybe people have other things going on in their lives and this is just one more thing and happens to be what pushes them over the edge. Maybe things don’t come as easily to others as they do to you. Maybe you’re in an easy major at an easy school.</p>

11

<p>Well, if you don’t have rigid grade scales in classes (or don’t have any given grading scale), you can’t do any of the mentioned things.</p>

12

<p>I don’t have much input for your seeing as I’m a first year college student, but preparation is key. This is my first semester in college, and I’ve been studying for finals for about two weeks now. Finals week begins next week, and I practically already know most of the material by heart. I think people freak out because they have been intimidated by the material all semester, or they feel that all their classes are piling on them at one time. Frustration and nervousness get the best of people. That, or people just procrastinate, which obviously isn’t good for tests like Finals. My philosophy is studying ahead of time (weeks in advance) so that when it comes to Finals, I’m not worried.</p>

13

<p>I’m not very good at final exams. Never have been. In high school, I always got C’s, D’s, and even an F. My average final and midterm grades probably did fall into the D category.</p>

<p>Freshman year of college, I only had to take one final during finals week the whole year. I got a 70 on it, when I had been consistently getting A’s in the class the whole semester. I ended up with an 89 in the class… my non-A.</p>

<p>This semester, I should have all A’s, but I have finals in all of my classes. I needed only a 74 to get an A in my German class, but I really feel like I bombed it, so I’ll probably come out of the class with a B. Haven’t taken others.</p>

<p>For some of us, stress and pressure just creates a really bad test-taking atmosphere. I study hard and I do well, but when there’s this final grade that I have to do so well on to keep what I’ve worked hard for, it is kind of daunting and I end up really choking on a test and forgetting what I studied.</p>

14

<p>God… such stereotypical CC kids…</p>

15

<p>Too many variables for too many different situations for hundreds of thousands of students.</p>

<p>My own reason is that I want a B in bio and also that you need to have a final average of around 96 to get an A in Calc I (BC) here.</p>

16

<p>People sweat over finals because they can be worth a lot towards your class grade. My daughter’s finals are worth 40% of the class grade and the one final paper she has is also worth 40%.</p>

17

<p>I’m actually bored over finals this time. I had papers in every class that were due a few days ago, then 1 exam that i’m over-prepared for. I can’t find many wanting to go out and do things either, cause they’re all frantic about it. I don’t know if in the other classes they just wanted to spare us the stress, but it’s appreciated.</p>

18

<p>I have a final worth 60% of my grade. Kind of easy to go crazy when one test is worth more than half of my final grade.</p>

19

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<p>I mean, also it’s the fact that some people may have kind of screwed up on their first two midterms, so when the final is worth 40% of the total grade, or twice the midterms, then there’s some reason to worry if you do bad. It could mean having to retake the whole class again. I’m not too worried about getting a 4.0 GPA since it’s only my first semester in college, but I just don’t want to do bad or have to retake anything.</p>

20

<p>Personally, I’m a scholarship kid. I need to maintain a 3.0 GPA in an engineering major. I’m currently at a 3.25, and when something like a scholarship that covers almost all of my tuition is on the line, it’s easy to go crazy. Plus, I have a couple classes graded on the curve, and one has my final as 1/3 of my semester grade. So yes I am going crazy over finals.</p>