7 Reasons Midterms Need To Go
Written by Gabrielle Gronewold, Culture Staff Writer
The ~beloved~ midterm. She is beautiful, she is graceful—but she needs to pack her bags and leave. Here are seven reasons the midterm, in all her glory, isn’t really that great anyway.
1. Exams impact student’s well-being and mental health.
The amount of pressure put on students to perform well on midterm exams is astounding. Midterms typically make up a large percentage of the overall class’s grade, causing a lot of stress and pressure to succeed and do well on each exam in order to do well in the class. Research shows this type of pressure can be extremely costly to one’s mental health—students have been experiencing a rise in self-harm and anorexia, among other personal struggles as a result of constant testing (Stone, 2015).
2. It’s one day of your entire life.
Exams take place on a single day of a whole semester, in a whole year, in your entire life. How can that matter? Every day isn’t going to be your best day, so there is no way one exam can represent how much you actually know or how well you can perform. Having exams on a single day also doesn’t account for the exterior emotions and events that students are feeling and experiencing in addition to school.
3. The exhaustion that comes with extensive studying.
Fifty percent of college students experience daytime sleepiness and an additional 75% claim insufficient amounts of sleep (Hershner & Chervin). The lack of sleep experienced by college students can be linked to an array of mental health and well-being problems—including lower grade point averages, compromised learning, the possibility for academic failure and impaired moods—outside of the already abundant list of physical sleep deprivation consequences (Hershner & Chervin).
Now imagine the lack of sleep students face when preparing for a week of exams every month. Yeah, it’s not great. Midterm exams add pressures and demands for mass memorization and long hours of studying. How are students expected to perform well on a few hours of sleep?
4. There’s no way to know what to expect for your first exam.
Exams bring out the worst thoughts in everyone. Will I do good? How hard is it gonna be? Is there a curve? What’s the grade distribution? And my very favorite, What the hell is the exam going to look like?
I could not tell you how many times I’ve heard that last question. Walking into an exam and not knowing what type of questions will be asked or how the professor will word said questions is the worst feeling. Half the time I have a new professor, I study aimlessly hoping it will be good enough for the exam style, and then while taking the exam I try to memorize their question style and how specific they are. How is it fair to test students in a way they aren’t familiar with so don’t know quite what to expect? I’ve taken plenty of exams in college but with each new one comes butterflies to my stomach.
5. People who don’t go to class can still do good.
Now don’t get me wrong, I do not have perfect attendance. But I do make an effort to show up to class and get things out of my pricey college tuition. Classes that rely purely on exams for the final grades aren’t acknowledging students who show up to class. More specifically, classes that post lecture slides and videos. Why can’t I get a few brownie points for sitting in the lecture hall each week when countless others skip?
Classes that rely on exams for the entire grade put way too much importance on the exams. A fair class is one with different activities and assignments that can fit the needs and strengths of all learners.
6. In the real world, we will always have Google.
Knowing things off the top of your head is great. Being educated about your career is also great. But every time I have forgotten something from a class I have taken in the past, I have either gone back into my notes and looked, or just popped open Google and figured it out. Now, maybe this is the bliss of being a Gen Z, but access to the internet is a reality and will always be with us while in the workplace.
Making students take exams without access to their notes is contradictory to the reality they will be met with outside the classroom. Exams don’t accurately show what students learn because if they’ve taken great notes on a concept, they will always be able to recollect those notes and use them when needed. Why are we putting an unearthly amount of stress on students for a 50-minute exam?
7. Memorization isn’t beneficial in the long-term.
A lot of students memorize class information purely for the exam and not for real learning. This is not beneficial. When students use random connections and mind tricks to memorize facts for the short-term, it bypasses actual learning methods and does not ingrain their long-term memory (Orlin, 2013). They will know it on the exam, and then never again. How is this helpful?
The fact is, midterms aren’t beneficial to a student’s learning nor reflective of their performance abilities outside of the classroom. Although they may be an easy, simple and fairly quick way to “assess” the class’s performance, they aren’t facilitating the actual education students want and need.
The failure to accurately support and prepare students for exams matched with the astounding negative effects of both pressure and time demands required for exams is nothing but harmful. If professors and universities want to continue the use of midterms, major consideration needs to be made about their benefits, usage and most importantly—their effects on student’s well-being. ◾
Sources
Hershner, S. D., & Chervin, R. D. (2014). “Causes and consequences of sleepiness among college students.” Nature and science of sleep, 6, 73–84.
Stone, J. “Over-focus on exams causes mental health problems and self-harm among pupils.” Independent. July 6, 2015.
Orlin, B. “When Memorization Gets in the Way of Learning.” The Atlantic. September 9, 2013.