Purple Haze
Praise for midterms
By Lauren Bagian

Jan. 15, 2009

Next week is midterm week at Northern. All the work for each class during the semester is summed up into an hour and a half of agonizing brain-raking that leads to the question, “Why didn’t I study over Christmas vacation?!”

Everyone has their own opinion of midterms. Some students see them as half days of school so it’s a plus if they can pass the test. Others see them as the deciding factor to get them out of the final exam since midterms make up 20 percent of the semester grade. I see midterms in a different way though. They actually make complete sense when it comes to academic success.

Without midterms, students would develop the pattern of cramming to pass tests since they wouldn’t have to remember anything about the subject after they passed the first test. However, midterms make students recall what they have already learned, and if they didn’t learn it the first time, it makes them study it again, illustrating how knowledge doesn’t, or shouldn’t, go away.

Math classes are a perfect example. Mathematical concepts build on each other. If you forget what you did in chapter one, chapter two is very difficult, if not impossible. Midterms make sure that the information taught in the first semester isn’t seeping out of student’s minds and being wasted.

Midterms also prepare students that are headed to college for the midterm and final exams of higher education. Without midterms in high school, there would be no foundation for studying and retaining such large amounts of information. Those large tests would be very difficult if effective test preparation habits have not been established.

Yes, midterms are hard, and it’s stressful to have to remember so much information about four (or five if you take a language) classes and take large tests on each of them right in a row. But as one of my favorite English teachers always says, “This test is designed to make you a better person.” Believe it or not, midterms are actually a very good thing, or at least that’s the way that I try to see it as an attempt to keep a positive mindset.