Satire

The month is May. Stress is increasing, coffee is consumed and exhausted students are stumbling into lockers in the hallway. As finals and AP exams are administered, Midtown students are feeling the pressure. Many students are taking multiple AP exams on top of finals for every class. 

Senior Caroline Brown is taking five AP exams and eight finals, all in the span of a week. 

“I haven’t slept in a long time; I don’t even know how long it’s been,” Brown said. “I drink four cups of black coffee a day and three energy drinks; I think I’m developing kidney issues. I can’t tell if my hands are shaking from the lack of sleep or the caffeine running through my veins.” 

Junior Josh Christian is taking AP Calculus AB, Physics 1, Basket Weaving, Statistics, World History and Tasmanian Politics. He also has to take finals worth 40% of his grade for six of his classes. 

“Do I know the content for any of my exams? No,” Christian said. “I do know that if this pain continues on for any longer, I’ll just go to take the exams and nap through them. The boost actual rest would give my mental health is more meaningful than any AP credit I could get.”

AP Spanish teacher Sabrina Jacobs assigns students weekly study guides in order to help them prepare for her final. 

“I give my students 30-page review booklets in order to ensure they have total mastery of the course content,” Jacobs said. “I don’t understand why they start crying when I hand the study guides out. It is only meant to better prepare them for the world out there.”

Freshman Julia Brown, Caroline’s younger sister, has become concerned about her older sister. 

“I’m only taking one AP, Human Geography; so I’m not that stressed,” Julia Brown said. “Caroline, on the other hand, is taking five. I’m worried about her; she’s not right in the head. At night I hear her crying herself to sleep to the sound of Heimler History review videos.”

Christian has worked very hard to prepare for his exams, devoting six hours a day to studying.

“I don’t even leave my room anymore,” Christian said. “My parents slide my dinner under my bedroom door. On a good day, I sleep roughly three hours a night. I’m starting to have black spots in my vision and hallucinations of answer sheets.”

In order to help ease her students’ anxiety about her final, English Teacher Miranda Johnson assigned a 15-minute adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” as a final grade to her students. 

“I’m so excited to see my students perform their adaptations in front of the entire school,” Johnson said. “They were telling me how nervous they were for their final; so, I assigned this as an alternative. I hope they’re happy!”

One of Johnson’s students, Chris Stewart has a different perspective on the final project. 

“Honestly, a test would’ve been better than this,” Stewart said. “I have to memorize 10 minutes of lines and stage directions. My stage fright is so bad, I fainted at rehearsal. I had to go to the hospital, which messed up my study schedule for the day; now, I’m going to fail all my tests.”

For now, students will continue to work hard in order to prepare for their countless tests and exams. 

“After I have finished my exams, I am taking a month-long trip to Aruba and not opening my school computer until August,” Caroline Brown said.