Final exams, you are not making us happy right now. Your schedule, your content, and your purpose leave a lot to be desired. Those countless pages of vocabulary words that must be memorized out of context. The grammar rules. Five paragraph essays. Pages of facts to be regurgitated.

Final exams, you are scarier than The Grudge. 

You are a bit of a supernatural curse just like that movie. You claim too many victims.

Too much of a grade. Too much of a focus. A whole week devoted to you!

And why?

We can’t decipher your justification.

To get us ready for high school? Or college?

Once again, why? Haven’t you heard they are breaking up with you?

You don’t teach us historical thinking skills or how to analyze or even how to create.

You teach us to play a game. To memorize. You teach us what it means to be frustrated and confused and how to work alone. You leave us in isolation and silence.

You are arbitrary.

You don’t measure our growth. You don’t provide feedback. You don’t really teach.

And guess what, final exams?

In a week we will have already forgotten every vocabulary word, every fact, every detail you contain.

In a week we will have wiped you clean from our minds.