With the first semester of online learning coming to an end, Neuqua students are preparing for online finals this year. This is the first time finals will be online and students do not know what to expect. Teachers are trying to keep finals close to what they would be like in person. Students and teachers are both struggling with the logistics of everything. Students have been working hard to cram in as much study time as possible as teachers begin wrapping up the final lessons of the semester and preparing them for finals.

Some upperclassmen at Neuqua Valley High School shared their opinions and advice regarding the current situation with finals this year.
Do you feel prepared for finals this year? More or less than previous years?
Sarojshree Janaki, junior: “I feel pretty unprepared to be honest, online learning is pretty rough :(. I’ve definitely put in less work overall because of the pandemic, so I feel less prepared for the questions that might be on there. It doesn’t help that we’re learning new content on top of studying the old content, so that’s like an information overload.”

Sanjay Ganesh, junior: “I do feel prepared for finals but I definitely feel a lot less prepared than I did in previous years. I think that’s mainly because we’ve had a lot less time to review than previous years, also the 2 week gap and learning before finals made preparing for finals a lot more difficult.”

How have your teachers prepared you for finals?
Janaki: “They’ve done their best to give us materials and explanations of what the finals would be like. Again, online is super rough, but I think they’ve done a good job with the time they were given.”

Ganesh: “My teachers this year have played a much smaller role in my preparations for finals. In previous years I felt like they’ve been more inclined to help out and use class time for review but I feel like this year with everything being on such a time crunch teachers have found it a lot more difficult to help us in our review process. That being said they have done the best they can, with offering different review resources, in order to help us prepare for finals.”

Would you feel more confident with finals if we had been learning in person?
Janaki: “Oh definitely!! Online learning is super hard for me, I don’t have that kind of an attention span.”

Ganesh: “Yes, I would feel a million times more confident with finals had we been learning in person for the semester only because the Virgil said it has definitely robbed us of many of the aspects of the typical classroom setting and it also has robbed us of a lot of class time that we would otherwise have.”

How has online learning affected your preparation for finals this year?
Janaki: “Having finals after winter break because of online learning sucks :/. It’s definitely given me less time to prepare for all the new content that’ll be texted on finals.”

Ganesh: “I feel like, as a result of online learning, I have had to do a lot more work by myself to prepare for finals because of the limited class time and limited interactions we have now.”

Do you have any advice for underclassmen regarding finals in general?
Janaki: “Do your best! Finals are important, but they aren’t everything, and your performance in class is much more important. It’s not the end of the world to bomb a final, and remember to stay confident so matter what :).”

Ganesh: “Use resources like rogerhub and prioritize your studying. If you only need a 30% to keep your A in a class, you don’t need to spend 5 hours a day studying for it. Instead use that time to study for a class that may require more effort.”