January is arguably the most stressful month of the year for high school students. Or perhaps “discombobulating” would be a more adequate word― being thrown from a week-and-a-half long break into the midst of second-quarter cramming and midterms is like getting a bucket of cold water dumped over your head. As a senior, this will be my fourth and final time plugging through the midterm season at CHHS (let’s not talk about college) and it’s all the harder when the overwhelming feeling of senioritis plagues every attempt to study I make. It’s almost impossible to come back from the holiday break and be able to remember where you left off in every class unless you studied every day. But let’s be real, who does that?
Anyway, last weekend I started to feel the impact of my ingenious decision to take three APs this year. Ironically, the GPA-killing class hasn’t been any of those, but the two math classes I’m taking, neither of which are APs. I’m not a math student by any stretch of the phrase, but I try to make the effort to do well in those classes, no matter how much the numbers confuse me. “Try” being the operative word here. I reluctantly spent my Saturday afternoon making Quizlet sets and retaking old tests in an attempt to memorize the material, and now with my midterm in two days all I can do is pray.
I would like to say I am numb to the test-taking experience. I am not. Although I’ve had an assessment every day in one class or another for the past week, every single one has evoked the same cycle of initial fear (as I cram the period before), then panic (as I am taking it), then regret (as I walk out of the class), then anger (as I mull over the questions I probably got wrong), and then finally acceptance (that I probably scored significantly lower than what I had hoped for). I’m in no position to complain, however― I am procrastinating studying for my exams by writing this newspaper article, after all.