Finals, Finals, Finals

Charlie Zielinski, Visuals Manager

With only a week left of school until finals start, every student worries about raising their grades.
Some students are worried about every final they take, and some, mostly seniors, know how finals work, so they don’t worry about them as much. Senior, Magnolia Klepacki said that when she was a freshman she “would study for a whole week before finals” and now that she’s a senior, she knows how finals work and doesn’t study as much as she used to.

No matter what the final is, or how prepared the student feels, they should still study or go over their study guide because a final is 20% of your grade and Magnolia said, “a lot of people think that finals aren’t that important, but it can honestly make or break your grade. If you have a borderline grade, it is especially important to study.”

Everyone has a different studying technique that works for them. Every class has a different way to study the different materials. To learn the different materials, Magnolia uses Studyblue, Quizlet, and notecards to get ready for her finals. Studying for an AP class is a lot different though. Most AP finals are a lot longer and Magnolias AP Chemistry final is 3 hours long. To prepare for it, she said she’s going to “look through my binder full of notes, read over my notes, and I might ask my teacher for old tests because the questions appear [on the final].”

Studying for a foreign language is a lot different because to pass a foreign language final exam, you need to have a basic understanding of what you have learned all year. Senior, Sam Hiatt-Wilson, said that “you can’t study for a language, you just brush up on words”. She also said that her Italian teacher always recommends, “making note cards and doing the review guide.” There are a lot of benefits of doing the review guide before the final. Everything that is going to be on the final, will be on that review guide and it will give you an idea of what you need to relearn. Another benefit of doing the final exam study guide is that a lot of teachers make the study guide extra credit. Some teachers add extra points to the exam from the study guide that you complete.

Final exam review guides are always important and always help. Review guides are “an overview of what you learned during the semester,” mentioned Senior, Mariela Salgado. Most review guides are easy and you will have a few days in class to go over what you learned, and a tip on how to start doing your study guide is to “start on the hard [problems] first, so that way you can go to your teacher and ask them “how do you do this” and they can explain it to you better” explained Senior, Katie Garcia. Both Mariela and Katie think that studying by yourself is the best idea though. They both say that studying with friends after school is distracting, so you should work by yourself and follow these tips to ace your finals.