This is the fall semester of my senior year. Senioritis has definitely kicked in. Especially this semester for me, finals is something totally different. As I’ve mentioned all semester, this one is varied in the classes I’m taking, the learning style, the homework commitment, and examination of said learning.

My FINALS breakdown:

2 takehomes

1 presentation & report

1 lab report

1 ethics paper

1 research presentation

I don’t have a single final cumulative exam this semester. Not one. And that’s pretty unusual for a science major, like super unusual. As I only had one class give out exams: Molecular Biology, its not too surprising that I didn’t have a final exam. I’m not sure where I stand on cumulative exams except it seems kinda unreasonable to ask us to memorize or know every single thing we learned this semester. And I know our professors aren’t actually asking us to do that but when ALL the material we went over could be covered during the exam then yeah it is asking us to know everything, every little thing.

I feel like takehomes is such a vague term for a exam that it could’ve been anything: a 10 page essay on a very specific hard prompt, many short answers, data analysis or some other kind of paper. Luckily my two takehomes follow in the latter: “shorter” prompt long response answers. The only thing is both takehomes have two prompts EACH making four takehomes actually. But that’s not too bad in the bigger scheme of things when during past reading periods and exam weeks I was cramming all the material for my exams.

What finals really comes down to is what is most important and interesting to me. Which final is coming first and do I need to prepare for sooner? Which final comes last and may get put on the backburner because I’m working on another final? Which requires the most time? How long can I procrastinate working on the final-paper or exam? And lastly when do I need to finish said final by?

I think these are all questions students face, and everyone may answer them differently but one things for sure, when I graduate in the spring I’m definitely not gonna miss taking finals.