WOODBURY — We all know how stressful finals are in school. With the school year winding down, students here at Nonnewaug have to take finals within the next month or so. There has been some conflict with the final exams. Major changes have been made from last year and previous years.

“We took midterms away because our teachers are working really hard making formative assessments,” Nonnewaug assistant principal Declan Curtin said in a story the Chief Advocate published earlier this year. “We think we have enough information that tells us where our students’ levels and skills are. We have NWEA testing and meetings going over student progress. … We do a lot of checking throughout the year on where students are at on tests. Going forward it is important to take exams and learn from them so when we go to college we are prepared for situations like that.”

But midterms separate the work from the beginning of the year. Without them, it’s going to be a lot more stressful and hard to remember what we did within a couple of weeks into school. In previous years, we worked around the NWEA and testing schedule and still took midterms. It was better because I got the midterms done, did well on them, and got out of school early those days.

I don’t mind taking finals because it’s a requirement throughout most high schools. Although, Nonnewaug’s change in finals this year is going to throw a lot of people off.

The new changes from the Nonnewaug student handbook says, “For the 2024-2025 school year, juniors will no longer have an exam exemption privilege. Only seniors earning a cumulative course grade of ninety (90) or above may request to be exempted from taking that course’s final exam.”

This is fair for the students who work hard all year, but the change to just seniors is a little unfair because they already took quite a bit away from the class of 2026 with previous things, and they keep on changing so much more.

“This year’s seniors didn’t have to take finals last year if their grade was a 90 or above, and juniors that get good enough grades and try hard still have to take them,” said junior Brayden Whipple.

That was a change a lot of people don’t necessarily agree with, but it’s not that change that made these students disagree as much as removing midterms. With the midterms discontinued, the finals are going to me much harder because we have to remember a year’s worth of work in some classes.

“I think midterms were useful because everything is on the final and they same kids can’t remember a year’s worth of content,” said Whipple.

I feel like that just shows some unfairness because if it was working well, they shouldn’t have changed it.

“I don’t have a problem with the change of finals turning into just a senior privilege, even though I have to take most of them because my grades aren’t high enough,” said senior Cameron Fraizer. “Although, it’s very hard for students to memorize everything and puts a lot of stress on them.”

This is the opinion of Matt Molleur, a junior reporter for the Chief Advocate.