Stress is extremely hard to deal with, which is ironic because stress is our bodies reacting to events that are hard to deal with. Students just had to deal with midterms, and if other students are anything like myself, exams are one of the leading causes of stress in a typical year.
I’m curious about the actual reasoning behind doing exams. Sure, they are supposed to test us to see if we are actually paying attention to what we learn in class. But our brains are all different.
Someone might be a dedicated student, a student that comes to every class and participates with questions and enthusiasm, someone who does all their assignments and reads the materials. Yet when under the intense pressure of an exam, their ability to vomit out information in a short amount of time is extremely hard for them. Their brains don’t function as well under that stress.
Then there are students who may not have to show up in class as often but if they cram the night before an exam, they’re able to breezily let forth the information needed. Our brains react differently under stress and may not correctly reflect what a person knows or is capable of doing.
So is there another alternative? Exams have been the main way schools test knowledge for a long time, but as we know, the world is changing all the time, and more and more we are discovering that old methods may not be good methods. So my question is this: are exams really a good measure of what a student is learning and contributing?
More and more we’re discovering that stress is a leading cause in many realms of poor health. Even though most students are young and feel like they’re invincible and will be young forever, everything catches up with us. There are so many rotten things going on in the world, so many things to already stress out about; wouldn’t it be great if the school experience was, for the most part, as stress-free as possible? It’s not a new concept that a relaxed person is someone who retains more information. So maybe we should really try and build on this, and leave exams in the past with other dinosaur methods and tactics.