Finals Time at Magnet

With only a few days remaining until our first day of Final exams, Magnet students are hurrying to revise and condense notes and study key concepts which will be covered on these exams. One thing of importance to remember is that even the Magnet faculty are not unanimous in their appraisal of final exams, and some even doubt that final exams accomplish what they set out to accomplish. One might question how it is possible to fit an entire year or half a year into one hundred minutes of an examination, yet most do not question the logic behind it all. Oftentimes final exams turn into almost like a buffet with only appetizers; you get a sample of everything, but you do not really get all that you need from each of the important topics.

My Physics I final exam this year has twenty four questions on it, with twenty that we have to answer to receive full credit. Even though the exam only covers the second half of the year, I think it is quite foolish to sum up five months of a student's life of building up knowledge on one test. Sure the test helps us recall concepts from five months ago that we may have forgotten, but what happens after finals? Summertime starts, and we all know what that means. Our brains turn off "school mode" and turn on "break" mode. While this doesn't result in all the knowledge being lost, some of the finer concepts that were tested on the final will be lost with time over the summer anyway. September is often a key month for teachers to review concepts from the past year that will be built on in the coming year. In my opinion, final exams put an over-emphasis on short-term knowledge and a lesser emphasis on the long-term love of learning.

A much more practical way to keep up knowledge over the summer would be to take a textbook home and read the material from it in an attempt to gain more knowledge on a particular topic of interest. For those who are curious, the final exam schedule is as follows:

Friday Exams: B 1/2 & B 7/8
Monday Exams: A 1/2 & A 7/8
Tuesday Exams: B 3/4 & B 9/10
Wednesday Exams: A 3/4 & A 9/10

I suggest consulting your technology or fitness teachers for the dates of your technology and fitness exams. The schedule varies based on whether you are an underclassmen or an upperclassmen.