Walking down the hallway, a junior goes to wave at their senior friend, forgetting they are gone. They wonder why they are still here, taking tests, even though the seniors get the luxury of starting their summer break early.

At the end of year after the seniors leave and it begins to feel like summer again the more the year goes on. Students start losing their motivation, teachers start cramming to fit in all of this semester’s learning and students prepare themselves for their upcoming tests. This leads to complaints from students and teachers about the issues involving the year coming to a close. Some of the common things are motivation, cramming season, why finals aren’t optional for other grades, and also AP exams. 

This time of year students lose motivation as teachers begin cramming and they are frantically trying to balance their time for all of their finals, while trying to maintain their grades. The result of all these factors combined make it hard for students to want to show up to school and work hard in their classes.

 “I definitely start to feel unmotivated at the end of the school year”, says Grace Schomer, sophomore at MCHS,”

“Just because I get tired of doing the same thing over and over again … and I just start thinking of summer and sports ending and finally getting a break and this just feels like the last stretch.”.

This is a common feeling among students, since it is hard to feel motivation when summer break is just a reach away. The pressure of piling assignments before the year reaches the end, grueling finals and AP exams, makes students feel like no matter what they do they will be drowning in work, so they just stop trying.

One of the most difficult parts of nearing the end of the school year for teachers and students alike is the amount of work being assigned in the remaining weeks. There are two sides of this workload spectrum. One side consists of teachers not assigning any homework and the class sitting in an uncomfortable silence for the entirety of the period. The other side of the spectrum consists of teachers assigning too much work in an attempt to keep students engaged until finals, which actually increases impatience and stress within the classroom. This period of time is arguably the most painful part of the school year. Students are anxiously balancing studying for finals and getting assignments turned in, while teachers are trying to balance not assigning too much homework and keeping student engagement high.

When asked for his opinion on the amount of work students should be assigned at the end of the year, Anthony Powe, a social science teacher at MCHS, gave a simple response.

“So, every class is different, obviously,” Powe explains, “But work should be purposeful. It should connected to the rest of the course. So, there should also be less work with more purpose.”

With all the cramming and stress that comes with it, some students also wonder why finals are optional for just the seniors and not other grades.

Often juniors wonder why they don’t have final exemption just like seniors. Juniors have a hard year as it is and if they are doing well in their class, why not let them skip the final just like seniors can. But only to a certain extent. A junior’s grades should be 80% or higher to be able to skip that class’s final exam. 75% of high school students have a significant increase in stress levels. School gets harder and harder as the years go on, therefore, anxiety also increases because of this, junior’s should have an option to have or not have a final in order to alleviate the end of the year fallout.

Back in 2022, a new law was released known as Public Act 101-0654, which is a law in Illinois about where the state sends schools placement recommendations or required placement recommendations. And ever since there has been a massive increase of students now taking AP classes. Whether they have previously taken AP classes or not. Meaning when they are placed into these classes sometimes they’re not ready for the workload or the difficulty level of that class. Although the AP exam is optional, if they sign up they would have to cram what they are learning within a whole year. 

There are some AP teachers who make finals optional for students who have taken the AP exam. But not every AP teacher does that, meaning that some students will still have to worry about their grade dropping after all that hard work going into the exam. 

Although some people would argue that it isn’t impossible to have motivation at the end of the year, for many teachers and students it feels that way. Some teachers and students keep up the energy and may work even harder to get good grades on finals and end the year with good grades. But,studies show that upwards of 40% of students lose motivation when the school days begin to feel repetitive, which for many people is at the end of the year when every class is just working on study guides.

The end of the school year brings loads of stress and anxiety to students nationwide. The combination of preparing for finals, scrambling to turn in last minute projects or assignments, lack of motivation, and even AP exams can be a lot for a student to handle in either one month or just a few weeks.