Midterm week is a dreadful one according to many Cape Henry students, because of the increase of stress, distractions becoming larger, and the need for better time management. Many students are found to have high levels of stress during this week causing the levels to increase fifteen percent according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Midterm stress isn’t just aimed toward upperclassmen, relating to final transcripts being sent to colleges, but underclassmen experience the same amounts of stress to finish off their first semester grades strong.

Freshman Graham Campbell expresses his stress for his first Upper School midterms. 

  “I’m pretty stressed and usually I’m not that stressed,” said Campbell. “I’m mostly stressed out about math and how to study for it.”

Even though freshmen and sophomores experience stress for midterms, the juniors and seniors have expressed they felt overwhelmed in a different way, correlating with college. Seniors Zane McCuan and Alex Gordon are preparing for their last midterms of high school and have high stress levels. 

“I’m overall struggling and am stressed about the amount of studying I have,” McCuan said. 

McCuan feels like he isn’t well prepared and doesn’t have enough materials to study. This caused more stress to the upcoming week causing him to become frantic to get all the information needed for the assessmentAdd paraphrase here

“I’m stressed because I don’t know how I’ll manage my time studying because I have three and I don’t want to study for one more than the other,” Gordon said. “I want to make sure I end with good grades to send to colleges.” 

Students in the Upper School are frantically preparing for their midterm exams that are worth 20% of their grades by using study methods such as: Quizlet, flashcards, and study buddies. As they study using these methods, students tend to get off track and are easily distracted by the technology, and other factors around them, ultimately causing them more stress until they start retaining the information. The distractions of technology are tempting and cause procrastination. Around 80-90% of students have procrastination and the leading cause is phones according to National University. Senior Kyndl Couch has many midterm exams, including: Economics, Honors Anatomy, French, and Religion. She explains her study methods to feel prepared, while undergoing stress, as well as methods to lower her stress levels.

“If I’m stressed, I try not to think about it first off, then, once I have to start thinking about it, I start to prepare really well so I know the material and feel prepared,” Couch said. “If I feel prepared, then my stress levels go down and all I have left is to wait until I take the exam. The technology around me can sometimes become distracting, but I use my planner to keep me on track by writing down important stuff academically and stuff I need to do school wise, so I can plan things out and have better time management.”

Unlike Couch, junior Zack Duncan feels like the pressure gradually increases as the test day approaches, but finds his phone to be a distraction as well. 

“A great portion of it gets eaten up by my phone,” Duncan said. “I do my best to stay conscious about how much I use my phone and I’ll do my best to put it on the other side of the room but I often find myself gravitating towards it during any sort of pause in my studying. It’s so easy to tell yourself that you’re going to look something up or review the notes on your phone and get distracted when you actually pick your phone up.”