New Midterm Schedule: Love It or Hate It?

GHS has changed the schedule for midterms. Now students have more time in between midterms; but this also means that they have classes within those breaks. This new schedule begs the question to GHS students: do you love the new schedule or hate it?

During the 2019-2020 school year, students prepared to have seven (depending on the number of core and elective classes they took) within a three day span; they had Monday and Friday off, and each day in between was a half day. With this schedule a student had to go from one midterm to the next, but only had to focus on studying (and any extra-curricular activities) and was able to complete all midterms at once.

The differences of this year is that GHS students have their seven midterms within a three week span and they are still required to attend their other classes.

This new schedule does allow a student more time to prepare for their midterms; seniors that I have interviewed agreed that they were thankful for this extra time. However, it is also these students who feel more stressed at the moment. When talking to these students, they all wanted to remain unnamed as they knew that this would be posted to our website and they are sharing their personal opinions.

The senior students I spoke with indicated that their other classes are assigning homework, starting new subjects, and racing to keep up with the AP curriculum for the tests coming in May. They now have to balance studying for all seven midterms, finishing all the homework their seven classes have assigned, not to mention applying to colleges.

In contrast, numerous other students, from varying grades, find this new schedule to be more relaxing. In previous years the other midterm schedule was found stressful. Having to rush to study for each midterm and having extremely different subjects in one day, the more spread out schedule is beneficial to them.

This year has brought new ways of doing normal “old” things such as midterms and classes altogether. It has also brought new difficulties to students and staff as they are attempting to adjust to these new ways. Students this year have had contrasting opinions when it comes to the new midterm schedule versus the old schedule and one can only hope that next year, however we schedule midterms, will continue to be beneficial to GHS students.