IT'S ALMOST that time -- the culmination of the semester marked by the end of classes and the beginning of exams, dates which come close to overlapping each other. Classes end on Friday, Dec. 6 and exams begin immediately the following Monday. This means most students won't even have time to down a celebratory cup of egg nog before retiring to the bowels of Clemons for two days straight. In the future, the University needs to extend the reading period to make exams as fair measures of class performance as possible.
Contrary to the apparent belief of the University administration, final exams are not like normal tests. They are nearly always longer, harder and more comprehensive. Hence, the average student needs more time to prepare for a final than for a regular exam. A weekend is not sufficient. Additionally, students rarely have only one final. While a normal test may be the only thing on a student's agenda for any given week, a student is practically guaranteed to have at least two other exams to be simultaneously preparing for during finals week.
Yet the University still sees that short 48-hour window as sufficient time to synthesize a semester's worth of material. Think about it -- we get more of a break for midterms.
On a more sentimental note, this brief reading period makes the end of the year completely anti-climactic. The last day of classes can't always be the celebration we all want it to be, when we know that we're facing Calculus and ENGL 381 finals back to back in just two short days.
And because the end of exam week is staggered, everyone leaves on a different day. When a student finally emerges from her room to take her last exam, her whole house could have returned home, not to be seen for the next six weeks. The administration needs to give students a break -- literally -- before exams. They should extend the time period between the last day of classes and the first day of exams to give students time for both studying and recovering from classes.
True, not everyone has an exam scheduled for that first Monday. Exam scheduling is based on class times, so a student has little control over what days his exams fall on and the decision that happens to be handed down from the bureaucracy could significantly affect the student's results.
The University makes one minor concession -- a student may reschedule if they have three exams in a 24-hour period. This won't help a student who has four to take over that first Monday and Tuesday, with only two days without class to prepare.
The bottom line is that exam scheduling affects a student's performance, independent of his academic ability. Providing extra reading days would make taking exams more fair for the students with early exam times.
As it is, the only option we have in scheduling our exams lies in choosing classes at the right time. The University is thoughtful enough to post the exam schedule with the course offering directory. If exam spacing is that important, one has the option of choosing an exam schedule that best fits his or her study habits.
But few students will, nor should, schedule classes based on trivial criteria like exam timing. I'm not asking that the University attempt to perfect every individual's exam schedule to best suit his or her needs. Dealing with deadlines is unavoidable, especially in the academic world, and course times are the fairest way to schedule exam times.
The easiest means to help students maximize their academic performance is simply to extend the reading period. Start exams on the Wednesday after classes end to make the period comparable to fall reading days.
The one pitfall would be that the last exam will get pushed back two days later as well. The dorms, libraries and dining halls would necessarily stay open. But the latest a student could stay on Grounds would be Dec. 18, a date still comparable to when other schools close for the winter.
Control over one's own exam-taking schedule would make final exams a more accurate gauge of a student's performance in the class. The grade on a transcript should judge academic ability, not the scheduling circumstances of a final exam.
(Kimberly Liu's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at kliu@cavalierdaily.com.)
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