The anxious knot in your stomach, your hands starting to shake and your legs constantly moving up and down. If these feel familiar before you take a test, especially a final, then you might have test anxiety. This type of anxiety can be one of the most debatable arguments for bad test grades within school. Many argue that it’s a made up placebo effect while others experience this daily.

A piece from the National Library of Medicine expresses the results of a 2020 survey on test anxiety: “out of 200 students, the results showed that, overall, 151 (75.5%) were stressed out before the exam, and 49 (24.5%) were not stressed out.” This fear is more common than schools make it out to be. Every student has their own unique learning style and with that comes strengths and weaknesses.

With the different styles each student possesses, there will always be a teacher who will go their own way and prioritize short term memorization and understanding. In general, this technique isn’t necessarily hard, but when the term leads up to one big test determining your final grade, the panic can start to sink in.

I personally believe in the concept of test anxiety and how that stress and tension affects our grades. I’ve dealt with this anxiety all my life before any type of test. So when finals week comes around I absolutely dread the idea of one large test that basically sets my grade for the entire semester based on my performance.

When people don’t necessarily believe in the possibility, people dread these kinds of tests. They aren’t very open-minded to the fact that a singular test determining your grades, for the entire semester or year, might be problematic.

I discussed this idea with a couple of students to see their opinions on finals. I asked a student here at Cathedral, Stella Wahl, how she usually feels during finals compared to a normal school week. She said, “finals week only adds more onto my busy schedule. Cramming seven huge tests that basically affect our overall grade into the course of a week, not factoring in sports, clubs, activities and more, can be extremely stressful.”

Many of these finals add onto the stress that students already experience every day, raising the anxiety levels continuously. When students experience test anxiety, their bodies go into a stress response. This can include heart rate increasing and decrease in focus, and it can be harder to recall memory. It’s hard to work under pressure and excel at academic performance when you’re crammed into a silent room with a thick packet you must ace in order to pass.

I discussed with another student, Ava Virissimo, whether she believes final exams are a fair way to measure what you’ve learned over the entire semester. “I believe it’s unfair, you crammed the entire year, multiple tests, quizzes, projects and more all into one singular final,” Ava explains. “It can be extremely stressful to study for this and figure out what’s exactly going to be on the final versus what won’t be.”

With many students struggling with test anxiety during timed exams, teachers could start to recognize the pattern and present more project or presentation style exams. That way, students could prove they understand the material in a deeper and more meaningful way, instead of answering 60 multiple choice questions.

Having multiple finals in one week is a huge component to being stressed during finals week. The timing of tests amplifies the stress and affects short term recall. Education should prioritize what students can retain and apply, rather than just what they can memorize the weekend before.

For students like me, finals aren’t just another test. They factor in how well students can handle stress. Test anxiety is real and shouldn’t be overshadowed; if schools want students to succeed, they need to recognize that this learning style doesn’t just fit one person. It’s time to rethink whether one test should really carry so much weight.