By: Zainab Salam, Opinions Editor
Don’t you just love it when a course doesn’t have a final exam? I know I do. A certain joy overtakes me when I realize that one of my courses won’t end with me scribbling furiously under the watchful eye of the invigilators. Call me dramatic, but I swear I feel five pounds lighter.
Without the pressure of a final, I can lean into the coursework. Every essay, presentation, and project feels more purposeful. The course becomes far more engaging, without the looming shadow of a future torture session — that torture session being a three-hour marathon, in an unfamiliar room, where I can’t control the variables. What if I end up getting sick that day? What if the room feels too hot? Or too cold? There’s simply too much at stake.
Courses without finals let me focus on the content itself. Working through the course material is all about curiosity, creativity, and knowledge acquisition. And honestly, that feels like a much better measure of success than how well I can scribble answers in a booklet under pressure, or fill in bubbles on a Scantron sheet.