At the end of every semester students dread finals. It can be stressful and overwhelming for most, especially because they’re essentially taking 6 different tests in just 2 days.

By the time the semester is coming to an end, finals are the only thing that stand is students’ way before break. However, taking 6 finals in 2 days is hard! It puts a lot on students’ plates, which is why I think there has been a change in the finals schedule.

Typically the schedule would be 2 half days on the 19th and 20th of December and on those 2 half days students would have 3 finals each day, this year it’s a little different, but in a very good way.

The last week of the semester will be a finals week. On the 17th students will take their 4th block final, on the 18th it will be 5th and 8th, on the 19th students will take their 1st and 2nd block finals and on the 20th students will finish off the 1st semester with their 3rd and 7th block finals.

Tuesday and Wednesday with be just a regular A and B day but Thursday and Friday will be half days (with a 12:05 release as opposed to 11:30.) On the last 2 days students will have ANP from 8:55 to 10:30.

With the extra time, students can study and work on study guides which can potentially be helpful to them. The full week of finals can give students the chance to take advantage of the time they have and really study for their finals without as much stress. The extra ANP time and extra nights of studying could possibly raise final grades for many students throughout the building.

I’m surprisingly happy about the new schedule and I feel that many OHS students will be happy about it too. The extra days will give students the time they need to study and get ready for the final stretch of the semester.

Finals shouldn’t be so stressful, but when they are all crammed together in only a couple days, the stress level is very high. However, some of that stress might be reduced with this new schedule. With the stress going down, hopefully the grades will also go up.