by Emma Fitzhugh | Staff Writer

It’s that time of year again. It’s after PSAT’s, and the week right before Christmas break- a time of year some Johnson students are more familiar with than others, depending on what grade they are in. That’s right- final exams are just around the corner.

Junior Erin Drew explains her take on final exams, and which classes she usually tries to exempt first.

“Whatever class is the hardest I usually try to exempt, especially because I’m not in AP. I go for the Pre-AP classes, because those are usually the hardest ones to do. I’m exempting US History, Pre-AP Physics, and Pre-AP Algebra II,” Drew said.

At the end of the first and second semester, students are required to take a final exam in each of their classes, including elective and/or language classes. However, students are able to exempt a maximum of three classes, as long as they have a reasonable number of absences/tardies, and passing grades, in addition to getting their exemption form completed before the deadline.

“I feel like we shouldn’t be able to exempt more than three exams, because since there’s four core classes, you should have three exemptions, so you’d have to at least take one of your four core classes. If you have the grades to exempt those three classes,” Drew said.

However, not every class should require a final exam, according to Drew.

“If it’s like a language yes, but I’m in AVID, and it’s a class that doesn’t need a final exam. But we take an exam for it anyways. The exam is usually pretty easy, you get a 100 every year,” Drew said.

Freshman Deandre Johns agrees with Drew, and goes on to explain why elective and language classes shouldn’t give final exams.

“I don’t think we should have to take those final exams, because if you’ve been trying the best to do what you’ve done [so far this year], then you should get a break,” Johns said.

Whether these classes should give final exams or not, almost all classes give out a final exam review. These may be optional, extra credit, or required for all students, depending on the class. Yet Johns explains how these reviews have benefits for all students, final exam or not.

“You should still have to do the final exam review even if you aren’t taking the exam, because it’s still practice so you don’t have to forget everything. I still have to do reviews for the classes I’m exempting, well, not for my English class, but some of the other classes I do,” Johns said.

While some students have to decide which exams are worth exempting, some don’t meet these requirements and find themselves taking all of them.

“Oh, I can’t  exempt anything. I can’t exempt because I missed two days, and I have really, really bad grades. I wanted to exempt my Chemistry Pre-AP, Geometry Pre-AP, and World History,

because they will be the most difficult,” sophomore Mikayla Cuellar said.

Sophomore Jaycie Leal agrees with Cuellar, yet adds that final exams don’t really seem to be that important in the end.

“It’s too much pressure and too much stress. We already take benchmarks all the time, so I mean that’s testing. And benchmarks pretty much cover everything. And the PSAT, we already took that too,” Leal said.