With finals season coming up at Carterville High School, all of the students are prepping for their exams in one way or another. “To help me study, I have been making sure to read my books for all of my classes and study all of my notes for the exams I have to take,” freshman Lanie Doering said. 

Also, teachers have to help the students prepare for finals season coming up. Most teachers are just giving out study guides and giving lectures during class time going over what is going to be on the exam. But other teachers are taking different approaches, like showing the class some of the questions that are actually going to be appearing on the exam and going over just the main idea of what the exam will end up looking like.

Since it is first semester finals, there are some rules over which exams you can and cannot be exempt from. Any whole year long classes that you take, you have to take an exam for. “I have to take 4 exams this semester,” freshman Sophie Wagner said.

There are ways that a student can become exempt from the finals. But the rules are you cannot have 3 or more excused absences, and you cannot have even 1 unexcused absence. Another way that you can become exempt from the finals that does not have anything to do with attendance is that you must have above a C grade in the gradebook. “I try to focus on keeping good attendance habits (especially in the fall) so that the workload is much lighter for the 1st semester exams, and practicing this will also better my chances at not having to sit for the spring exams,” sophomore Olin Clark said.

CHS has Even & Odd Days, and on the Even Day (December 17), we take the exams that we have for the classes that are an even period, such as 2, 4, 6, and 8 hours. And then on the Odd Day (December 18), students take the exams for classes that are an odd period, such as 1, 3, and 7 hour (5 being our lunch hour). Then there is Friday (December 19) where students who missed any of the exam days can make-up any of the exams that they ended up missing or if they just did not show up to any of the exam days.

Some of the students this year have the opportunity to be able to skip days, get to school late because they do not have exams until a certain hour, and being able to leave the school early if they already finished all of their exams for the day. Most students are also allowed to skip Friday (the make-up exam day) if they did not skip any of the days or just have any other exams to take in general. “I get to have the opportunity to leave for my 8th hour finals, because I am exempt from that class’s final,” freshman Onna Goetz said.