With extensive study guides, extended test-taking periods, and high levels of stress, staying up past midnight is not an uncommon task for high-schoolers during finals week. It’s mind-blowing to know that one substantial exam could potentially destroy your grade and possibly GPA, and they are even seen by colleges when reading your application. A single exam could prevent you from getting into the college of your dreams! Final exams are negatively affecting high school student performance and health (grades 9-12).
Stress is a very common idea that tends to taunt high-schoolers during finals week; after all, finals week is often known as “death week” (Staff). According to a study done by Victoria Tennant, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Education, stress is a neutral feeling that can either be perceived as positive or negative but is generally thought of as negative
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Lewis, the author of Stress-Proofing Your Child, once said, “Stress is pressure” (Tennant), and the majority of this pressure can be found in the expectations of peers, teachers, and parents. According to the “Our Turn Column”, the main purpose of a final exam is to give students who did poorly on previous quizzes or tests or didn’t understand the material one ‘final’ chance to improve their grade (Staff). These major exams, however, are actually proving to be very harmful to students’ grades and health. Since stress is associated with the brain, it tends to get into the minds of the students, decreasing testing scores. When a student is stressed, they have the tendency to forget everything that they had studied the night before which just leads to more stress; as this stress builds up, it overtakes everything else in the mind. This can lead to blank short answers and essays or random guesses on the multiple choice. A lower grade would then be received due to the stress that the student was
They concluded that exam stress reduces immune function, potentially leaving the individual vulnerable to illness and infections. Immune function is also affected by psychological variables such as the stress of life events and feelings of loneliness. These long term stressors may make individuals more vulnerable to the added effect of short term stressors such as exams.
Over the last twelve weeks, many students have participated in their own Single Subject Design (SSD) contain stress levels throughout each week of the semester. Throughout this design, the reversal design method was used throughout the fall semester. In this study, there was many high and low scores on the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), which is calculated as the following: zero=4, one=three, two=two, three=one, and four= zero. Many questions were answered on a scale of never (zero) to very often (four) pertaining to how often have you felt difficulties were piling so high that you could not overcome them, been upset because of something that happened unexpectedly, and much more. So, also, this study was a process to see how effective some interventions helped reduce your stressful semester.
A timed task is a heavy duty on itself. It’s challenging to remember a certain equation from a dozen of them, or to add another equation on top of another , or dig your memory to solve a problem and then get mixt up by the terms and so on so forth , and then the thoughts of failing surrounds you ether you complete it with a high score or give up and do what you can remember and that is not good. Lack of preparation for the test and not knowing what subjects they will include more. Testing is a failing factor for many students even though they studied the materials and did what they had to do to get prepared. Not being able to be calm while taking the test can make you fail. I read an article from The New York Times written by Kate Taylor on March 7, 2018 she says” At Stuyvesant High School, the most competitive of New York City’s specialized public schools, only 10 black students and 27 Latino students received offers this year” “ according to data released by the education department on Wednesday, black and Latino students made up only 10 percent of those offered spots for next fall at the eight high schools that administer the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, a percentage that has been essentially unchanged for
First This paragraph will explain how the tests are stressful.Parents make their kids drop out.Kids may come home crying that they don't want to take the test as they think they will fail. Another thing is that it's No fun during the year of learning.The teachers have to teach the test. Now that you learned test are stressful.
Stress and Test Anxiety in Schools: Are Test Scores Really the Most Important Factor in Education?
Stress, America’s silent killers. Stress affects people of all ages, ethnicities and genders. Due to its complex nature the concept of stress is constantly being studied. Extensive research has discovered that stress can cause both psychological, and physiological issues. I’m writing on the concept of stress because it is something I have been able to identify with as a transitioning college student. It is also something I know many people can identify with but don’t necessarily know how to deal with.
With the high-stakes of standardized tests in 2016, there comes numerous problems. One of the main issues is that some students develop test anxiety from all the pressure (Mooney 33). With multiple final exams to take, it becomes difficult for students to successfully study for each exam without sacrificing
Some may argue that testing can be a good way to determine someone's level of intelligence but the preparation of it can bring a boat load of anxiety. Students would legit do anything it takes to pass a test because the ideal they have in their minds is that if whether they pass or fail the exam it will have either a positive or negative effect on their futures lives. Some students can handle stress but some can’t. Speaking from experience taking a standardized test every other day to “test my growth” doesn’t leave me any room to think about or accomplish things that really need to be done or what I actually need to improve on to better myself. Stressing over taking tests can also be a an undermine to learning. All the pressure and the stressing of the students passing these standardized Test have the teachers neglecting the fact that they are not teaching students skills that go far beyond testing.
I, like many other students, have fallen victim to the panic-cram-panic cycle right before a final. Those nights full of cramming and binge drinking Red Bulls have resulted in missed questions on topics I had already known. My experience with that has been reported by a phycology professor at the University of Chicago, Sain Beilock, who stated that “stressing about doing well on an important exam can backfire, leading students to ‘choke under pressure’ or score less well than they might otherwise scoring the stakes weren’t that high.” The stress that is brought by this has also been proven, by Cornell University Medical School, to cause long-term damage by “…stunning the cognitive system that support the attention and memory skills everyday,”
Feeling stressed can take a toll on your emotional health. At the time of exams, people develop this stress, and adults need better ways to help their kids cope with the stress. Parents need to understand the stress and be cooperative in any way.
This in-between phase is where stress is at its highest. The period usually occurs during our college phase because college is typically (not always though) a necessity in order to succeed. Standards are different with every job, but success in a field depends on willpower and perseverance. Stress affects everyone on different levels, where some thrive off stress and many do not. The symptoms of stress are slight, where most people might not even realize that they are even showing symptoms, so learning to recognize even the slightest symptoms may prove to be beneficial. After recognizing the symptoms of stress, these students and everyone else could take measures to relax or perform activities that relieve stress. These slight side effects, that may not be noticeable, are impairing individuals mentally, and if symptoms remain untreated, then physical side effects occur as well. Choosing to do well is stressful because it is guaranteed that there is a mountain of work in the way before an individual reaches success.
That feeling of walking back from an exam or staying up all night cramming information is well known to any student who has been through college. It leaves one feeling overwhelmed like the week will never end. The feelings are held inside while friends and roommates accuse moodiness which leads to the meltdown that is inevitable. These times are a result of a common state known as stress. Stress is a condition in which the body responds to any kind of demand or threat caused by life factors which include pressure, work, school, major changes, and lack of sleep. This factor is very common in colleges, especially freshmen and can also be seen here at Trine University. Stress can affect both physical and mental conditions in the body, such as sleep patterns, eating habits, anxiety,
Thesis: Today I will discuss about sources and effects of student stress and efficient ways to manage this emotional and physical strain.
Stress is no new phenomenon. It’s been around as long as man and has captivated scholars and physicians alike. With the growing demand for degrees in the professional world comes the growth of the number of college students. The relationship between stress and college students has become the subject of on-going research. Several studies show that stress in college students is increasing with time and the authors of those studies are attributing this to an increased number of students. Other research seems to indicate that it isn’t necessarily the stress that is increasing but the awareness of it. Increased awareness of stress, and its unique toll on individuals, allows colleges and students to recognize
Which collects the health statistics of students from universities all around the world every second year, reported that 40.2 percent of Santa Clara University students identified that stress affected their individual academic performance during the last 12 months of their studies (Temple,2011). Temple (2011) reported a survey conducted in 2004 that assessed the overall well-being of 47,202 undergraduates nationwide. The findings were that 32.4 percent of students recognized stress as the main obstacle to their academic performance. This was said to be above the common cold, depression, death of a relative, sexual assault and eating disorders. Stress is “once considered as the nation’s number one health epidemic; prolonged stress can lead to ulcers, heart disease, stroke, major depression and to a shorter life span” (Temple, 2011).