The end of the first quarter of the 2022-23 school year at Meridian this past Friday has garnered mixed reactions from students. Many say that the conclusion of the quarter is relieving, however, a great deal of students highlight the stress they’ve experienced over the last few weeks due to the increase in summative projects and assigned tests

Sophomore Grace Calabrese pointed out that, “deadlines are always stressful.” She continued explaining her thoughts concerning the end of the quarter by clarifying, “when you think about a deadline, you think of finishing something, and when you think about finishing something, you get stressed. I think it generally stresses people out because maybe they have incomplete work and their teacher is like ‘you have to finish it by the end of the quarter.’ It just really feels like a lot of work.”

Many students felt that the end of the quarter crept up on them and came sooner than expected, which freshman Solomon Modell emphasized by mentioning that he felt, “like this quarter went very fast and some classes don’t seem prepared to end.” 

Freshman Samuel Whittle agreed with him.“I am stressed and feel rushed to finish assignments,” Whittle said.

Grades were a major factor in stressing students out about the end of the quarter, including junior Delia Paradiso who admitted that she was not excited about the end of the quarter. “It is a rolling grade book, but I’m doing very bad. I feel like these grades will stick with me past the end of the quarter, despite the fact that it’s not going to be like that,” Paradiso said. 

What made the beginning of this semester unique was the rapid increase in student absences due to illnesses. This caused many students to fall behind on school work dangerously close to the conclusion of the quarter, which in turn, stressed them out even more. “When the flu was going around, the teachers continued with the class work and important materials,” sophomore Aurora Van Rooy said. 

Despite these many concerns, students have suggestions in mind for teachers which they hope FCCPS will hear out in order to prevent a similar stressful response to the next ending of a quarter. Freshman Adi Rose Henderson recommended offering help sessions during Mustang Block to make sure students are caught up.

Similarly, sophomore Abby Berg suggested that summatives should not be piled together at the end of the quarter. “If teachers could space out those summatives more, which sometimes they can’t do because they have content to teach, it would definitely be helpful,” recommended Berg. 

Calabrese agreed, highlighting the importance of teachers communicating with one another to coordinate summative assessments in a thoughtful and well-spaced out manner. “If they communicated more with each other about deadlines and just made an easier schedule for us to follow, than that would reduce [end of quarter] stress,” said Calabrese. 

Junior Sean Lewin mentioned that the grading system has changed to put less importance on quarter grades and emphasized that quarters are “far less significant” than they used to be. “I do think that maybe a lot of tests don’t necessarily need to be at the end of the quarter since it doesn’t matter and it’s unfortunate that that mindset is still applied today,” Lewin said.

Despite students’ relieved reaction to having a rolling gradebook, many still believe that teachers and administrators can do more to mitigate stress among students at the end of the quarter, including communicating with other teachers for the purpose of spacing out summatives, leaving less work for the very last week of the quarter, and better accommodating students who are behind on classwork due to family or medical reasons.