Masuk Free Press

Against the will of all Masuk students, midterms are rapidly approaching and leaving students as anxious and irritable as ever. A particularly hard-hit group in this event is the junior class. Already struggling with the widespread epidemic ‘Junior-itis’ and the stress of going through ‘the most important school-year’ for college applications, juniors all around Masuk are so uptight you could “cut the tension with a knife,” according to junior Alexa Gill. 

“I need to have good grades right now,” junior Aubrey Zvovushe-Ramos said. “I care about my grades a lot. I really want to have all A’s.”

With the stress of college applications closing in, there is more pressure on the class of 2025 than ever before. Students are feeling no relief from the school, either.

In 2023, Masuk organized midterm destressors during exam week for students to pet a dog or eat a freshly-baked chocolate chip cookie. But this year “the school is doing everything bad,” according to Zvovushe-Ramos.

“The thing that I’m most upset about is that they’re giving quizzes this week before midterms,” Gill said. “How do they expect us to study for midterms and study for quizzes at the same time?”

Zvovushe-Ramos shared this frustration. “We have done no midterm review in any class. So, I think that if we did real midterm review, then the results would be better.”

Junior year, for many, marks a significant increase in overall class difficulty and rigor. While it was a difficult adjustment the first few weeks, the difference is now becoming apparent yet again, leaving many students feeling unprepared. 

“I kinda ate last year. My math midterm was light work, but this year I have Mrs. Hart, so it’ll actually be harder,” Zvovushe-Ramos said. “I still want to get an A on it, though. I think I’ll have one exception of a B, which is definitely physics.” 

Zvovushe-Ramos is not alone in this feeling. A common concern amongst all juniors appears to be their physics grade. Junior Evan Boyle stated, “I’m definitely most worried about physics.” 

Boyle said he “did pretty well” on his midterms last year and hopes to continue the trend this year. However, as class difficulty increases, so does students’ study time.

“I’ll probably study at least 20 hours total,” Boyle said.  “I’m incredibly motivated, because we have that day off, Martin Luther King Day.”

Having a three-day weekend right before midterms is incredibly helpful to many students. It offers them extra study time, which Gill agreed is much needed.

“I like that teachers are giving study guides, but there’s no point to that if you’re also gonna give a bunch of quizzes this week, so none of us have time to do it. All of my actual studying is gonna be done out of school,” Gill said.

Quizzes days before the biggest test of the semester and little to no midterm review are new and intimidating things for the junior class. Coupled with the additional homework and extracurriculars, unadjusted juniors can find themselves with very little study time. Many end up like Gill, who will “probably study the day before each midterm.”

Many complaints have been heard among Masuk students about the midterm exam schedule as well, which features two exam days followed by a normal school day. White day exams continue after this. While the exact designer of the schedule is unknown, the plan is controversial at the very least.

“Let’s just get [midterms] over with,” Gill said. “Because that day in between is so irrelevant. We’re not gonna prep in class more than we would prep out of class. I think it’s stupid.”

The gap day runs with a regular school day schedule: 7:25 am to 2:00 pm. Students arrive home two hours later than they would following a half-day schedule or the midterm schedule. For those who work best in the comfort of their own home, they are losing valuable study time.

Zvovushe-Ramos said, “I hate the midterm schedule. I just wanna go ‘boom, boom, boom’, one week, all midterms done. It’s so stupid. We have a whole week of tests, and then we have to go to class for a whole entire day between midterms. Like, are you kidding me? No, no.”

Masuk High School’s current approach to midterms leaves many students feeling stressed and underprepared. Whether students are to blame for their own lack of initiative, or the school is to blame for failure to successfully prepare them, juniors all around Masuk are feeling the weight of midterms on their shoulders and cannot wait for it to lift.