By Elora Brow
Staff Writer
Every year, Mira Costa has had finals after the winter break, leaving students two weeks to stress about finals instead of enjoying their vacation. Starting next year finals will be before the winter break which could help students feel more confident on their finals because the information will be fresh in their minds and will have a less stressful break.
Mira Costa’s first semester has always ended three weeks after the two week winter break. This results in students taking their finals much later than most other schools. Starting next year the semester will be organized so that it will end before winter break and students can complete all their finals before leaving on vacation.
According to Principal Dr. Ben Dale, the year is currently broken down into two ninety day semesters. Next year it will be viewed as two seventy-five day semesters and then the period of time after AP testing in May, which is unclarified as to what it will be used for. This will be very helpful because then all the finals will be completed before the break and students can enjoy the break without stressing out about finals.
In addition to the fact that separating the semester into two seventy-five day semesters with extra time in May would place finals the week before the break, it would also reduce the stress of the students. As they are unsure of what they will do with the extra time after AP testing, Dale believes that it will greatly help reduce the stress of the students and give teachers time to work on projects with the students.
Having a year organized into two parts separated by a two week winter break will benefit all the students greatly. When everyone comes back from break, students and teachers can have a fresh start with all new information. This will result in them not having to go back and review lost information for their finals.
According to Dale, having finals before the break would also help reduce the stress of students because they wouldn’t have to worry about studying and forgetting the information they learned before. This is true considering that students spend a lot of time over break doing homework and preparing for their upcoming finals.
Considering Mira Costa has been focusing a lot on reducing the stress of the students, this change of finals before break could make a big impact on the reduction of stress. According to Junior Daisy Hummer, she would be able to enter her winter break stress free with no finals to worry about and less homework that would need to be done over the break.
According to math teacher Susan Takiguchi, when students come back from break, she spends time reviewing the information from before because the students forget it. This is a waste of time for the teachers and it would be much easier on them if the finals were before the break.
Overall, Mira Costa has always had finals after the winter break but it is harder on the students. Starting next year Costa will have its finals before winter break which will result in students having fresh information in their brains and it will allow students to be able to enjoy their winter break and not stress about the upcoming finals.
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