As the school year continues to approach its end, exam week inches closer. Exam week always seems to give students a lot of struggles and this year appears to be no exception.

So many problems can arise during exam week, making it difficult for both teachers and students.

A recurring issue of exam week is whether or not people will show up for review sessions. Many classes are given review days to prepare for their exam. However, many students choose to skip those reviews, which gives teachers the impression that students do not care about those days. With these thoughts in mind, some teachers don’t prepare for their review because they aren’t expecting students, while other teachers may not even come to school or leave early.

On the other hand, some teachers spend a lot of time preparing useful and helpful materials for their students to review for their exam. However, many times these teachers will walk into a classroom with only a few students, or even none.

“It just depends. My classes have a state final exam so that puts more importance for the students and encourages them to come to the review session,” said Math III and Pre-Calculus teacher Tiffany Cain, “It’s definitely frustrating when students don’t show up because teachers want to help their students. We spend a lot of time preparing material so when students don’t show up, it appears as if they don’t care.”

A suggestion on how to “survive” this problem is for students to talk to their teachers in advance about plans for their review day. That way, students can find out what material they will be receiving to prepare for their exam.

Another issue of exam week is that most underclassmen can’t drive. These students don’t have the option to leave school early when they don’t need to be there. This causes them to have to wait at school all day even if they don’t have anything to do there.

“I think that it’s pointless to be at school when you don’t really need to be there, or have already taken your exam,” said freshman David Nickels.

A solution could be for those students to go over the exam schedule with their parents and friends or siblings who can drive. That way, students can show when they would be able to leave school and see if they can get someone to drive them at that time.

A third struggle of exam week is absences. On certain days during exam week some students have no need to be at school because their class is over, the exam has been taken.  However, not showing up to school results in absences.

Athletes can accumulate no more than 10 absences per semester in order to be eligible to participate in their sport. Because of this rule, many athletes are obliged to attend school even if they have no need to be there.

“I feel like I still have to come to school during exam week on days that I really don’t need to just to make sure I don’t get too many absences,” said sophomore track and cross country runner Emily Lambe. “I don’t like it though and I don’t understand why that rule is just for athletes.”

Even though it’s not always fun, the only solution to prevent absences is to do your best to come to school. Ultimately, it will be very important in order to keep athletes eligible for their sport the next year.

Overall, it’s fairly obvious to see that exam week brings a lot of problems. However, there are solutions to them. By being proactive and finding solutions in advance, then exam week will become easier to survive.