We all remember springtime in high school and how it wasn’t always the rising temperatures that made us sweat. Finals time is stressful for students from all grades, but especially for those high school freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors.
Just the thought of the math Regents exam sends algebraic chills up our spines, culminating in a Pythagorean Theorem-sized anxiety attack. We remember those long nights of last-week cramming, with a steady diet of Mountain Dew and leftover Easter candy keeping our minds lubricated in wide-eyed hyper-sensitivity.
But was all that worrying over finals really necessary? Should we have focused more on the process of finding the answers rather than their regurgitation? To paraphrase a platitude we’ve all come across, “life is a journey, not a destination.” The journey from thought to answer teaches us about the process of learning, the process of life; that nothing is as it seems and all equations require turning the gears of the mind.
To think of any one grade as “final” misses the point of the test. Remember the process that gets you to the answer, and be prepared to modify your steps next time around.
