I’ve found myself reflecting on midterms, yet again. Though I feel a general joy that this hellish week has concluded, I can’t help but think that midterms are stupid.
I may be preaching to the choir right now. Hot take—tests suck! But I think there is a much deeper, fatal flaw that has been continually overlooked for decades. It is not a feasible task to take 3 to 4 tests of course material summation in one week.
Call me whiny, I think that it is an unrealistic request of the higher academia system to ask of us. Students are asked to withhold a near professional understanding of course material to perform with a pen on paper for not one, not two, not three…at least four classes.
Ask a career long doctor to take a test on Chapters 1 through 6 of Calculus at 9:30 in the morning and then go straight to an extensive Microbiology exam at 11—they’d call you crazy.
This isn’t even a STEM issue. This applies to all courses and majors. In what reasonable world am I supposed to remember the effortlessly confusing teachings of Kant and Sigmund Freud on top of months of Finance and Accounting concepts; and then be thrown into the wringer to prove my knowledge?
Listen. I’m aware I sound preachy right now. I know this is not something that will ever change. And I’m well aware that it is more than important to take these courses, master their material and implement them into real world practice to succeed in a career.
I’m just saying that it’s stupid the only way we seem to be able to do that is with our current system.
Some teachers have been nice enough to recognize that inherent issue and decide to combat it with open-note and open-book tests. Honestly, that’s a nice curb to our enthusiasm. It makes midterm week much easier to tackle.
But the amount of stress we must put ourselves under to receive a paper saying we’re masters in a topic is surreal. The expectations of us students are nearly unreachable from a mental health standard.
While all of this is doable in a sense, it is not practical. We should not have to enslave ourselves to academia to be something we want to be. There should be mental, physical, and emotional standards that must be met by our institutions.
Because while we are high-achieving students and aspiring professionals, we are also human. And if there’s one thing humans aren’t very good at it, it’s taking care of themselves.
Therefore, my advice to everyone is take care of themselves. If you can. I know for some it might be hardly possible to do, given course load and commitments. At least take a breather when it’s all said and done.
Though we might have to continue our parasitic relationship with higher education for a while longer, at least be aware that it really, really isn’t healthy.
Carter Kolpitcke can be reached at [email protected].