By Collette Lippman ’17

In an email sent out by Principal D’Amico to all staff on Dec. 22, it was announced that the time between midterm exams would be extended to one hour, rather than the thirty minute period that has been previously allocated in past years.

As well as extending the time between midterm exams, the new schedule will begin fifteen minutes earlier and end fifteen minutes later, thus causing school to run from 7:45 AM to 12:45 PM during midterms week.

According to D’Amico, “Expanding the time in between exams may also allow students and teachers some more time to get a bite to eat, get in the mindset to prepare for whatever is coming in the second exam block, and just feel a little less rushed”.

Some students have not taken a liking to the new midterm exam schedule, protesting what they believe to be it’s lack of a purpose.

“I think that students instead of studying and cramming during that hour will stress themselves out,” Julie Kaplan ’17 said. “Their brains won’t be able to hold in the information that they had just looked over.

The discontent with the new schedule has even led a frustrated student to create a petition to block the change from happening.

James Allott ’17, created a Change.org petition to garner a total of five hundred student signatures to protest the impliment of this new schedule. Within nine hours, the petition received almost three fourths of the total signatures needed.

“I made the petition because I really feel that there was nothing wrong with the current exam schedule. I haven’t heard a single student in favor of the change,” Allott said. “I think most kids just want to take their exams and go home.”

Despite acknowledging that the new schedule wouldn’t be popular among all students and faculty,  D’Amico ended the email on a hopeful note.

“It’s going to take some energy and a healthy dose of promotion to make this happen,” D’Amico said. “But if it helps us move toward taking anxiety down a notch during a stressful time, it’s definitely worth a shot!”

Photo used under the Creative Commons license