As students, one of the most stressful times of the semester is finals. Late nights at Starbucks, study groups, missing sleep and last minute cramming at the Student Union are just some of the many things students have to go through during this time. Why?

The end-of-semester load is spread out across two stressful weeks; the week before finals and finals week. This puts students into overload as teachers find it necessary to cram in as many tests, quizzes, projects and general information that they can, ruining any chance students would have to possibly prepare for finals a week early.

Under the current exam policy, students are to have two days in advance to prepare for finals; one last day of class and dead day, a day designed specifically for exam preparation. This day, which was created in hopes that it would ease the stress of finals, was created in vain. Why not just give students a full week instead of wasting it with two days when students were planning on doing their studying anyway?

If students were given a full week there would be less anxiety, more time to focus and ultimately better academic performance, as there would be less chance that they would have three finals packed in one day as many students have experienced this at least once.

In an e-mail sent from director of marketing Dr. James Muncy to Dr. Tracy Meyers in discussion of a possible new final exam policy, it was expressed that some teachers are also feeling overwhelmed during this week, as some of them often have classes with over 200 students, all of which take essay exams.

Teachers then speed up their grading in order to have final grades submitted by Monday for those students who plan on graduating that Saturday. This not only sacrifices fair grading, but creates errors.

A way to make final exams less hectic would be for those students that are graduating to take their exams a week early. This way, it would give teachers time to collect and average grades, and the registrar time to process those students who have completed enough credit hours that qualify for graduation.