What if I told you there might be another way to be less stressed during the ever-dreaded finals week?

Some schools in Louisville, mostly private, let kids go home early after finishing their finals.

Schools like St.Xavier and Mercy Academy allow their students to do this under certain guidelines. Most of these kids really like this way of taking finals; should Bullitt East try this out?

For Mercy, 4 days before Christmas break, finals start, and they are allowed to leave at 11:10 every one of those days. Some days they are even allowed to come in late if they have “Study” which is equivalent to our Study Hall. This works because they only attend the two classes they have finals in for 1.5 hours each per day, no others. Emily Smith, Mercy junior, said, “I would be annoyed if I had to stay all day.”

At St. X, they have one or two finals every day, Wednesday-Friday; some days they have none so they don’t have to come to school. They can even come in late some days, and after each individual student finishes their finals, they may leave. St. X senior, Zach Flood, said, “I feel like everyone thinks it’s easier.”

Smith and Flood both agreed that coming home early gives them more time to study for the upcoming tests the next day, and to relax after the stress of finals that day. Flood said, “It’s great getting to sleep later because it gives you more time to get woken up and get your brain in the ‘testing mindset’.” Smith definitely feels the same, she said, “I have a lot of time to study for the next day’s finals if needed. I love having it like this.”

This method of finals week seems to work great for these students and schools, so why does BE continue to do it our way? We could explore new ways of education, especially if it might benefit our students and their test scores. But like anything else, some of our students would like this, while others would not.

Kaitlyn Pruitt, BE sophomore, does like the way we do finals. She said, “You only have to worry about two or three classes a day and you get time in between the finals to study.” She makes a good point, but she’s still not opposed to the way schools like Mercy and St.X do it. Pruitt agreed that it would be nice to have the last half of the day for yourself. Although, she thinks it would be more stressful to have the finals back-to-back.

Flood, on the other hand, thinks all schools should treat finals week like St. X does. He said, “It allows you to just focus on finals and not have to worry about other classes.”

So, what way would you prefer your finals week to go?