Nashoba’s midterms are fast approaching, beginning on January 24th and ending on the 27th. This year, many upperclassmen and staff are hoping to reduce underclassmen’s stress in the last few weeks before exams. For many, their freshman year midterm experience was nerve-racking, and they were hoping to alleviate some of the stress for this year’s freshmen.

Every year, students struggle mentally to prepare for midterms, which can have physical symptoms. According to NSPCC, stress surrounding exams can affect young people’s ability to sleep, trigger anxiety attacks, depression and tearfulness, and eating disorders.

However, not all stress is bad. Stress can motivate students to do their best and help them to perform with more efficiency during a test. After all, midterms are an opportunity for students to showcase what they have learned in their classes, and healthy stress can make studying proactive and helpful. According to HelpGuide, “When stress is within your comfort zone, it can help you to stay focused, energetic, and alert.”

In order to maximize performance and preparedness for a test, students must find a balance between not studying enough and studying too much. This balance takes patience and time to discover, but this year, Nashoba is hoping to help out its underclassmen in this process.

On Friday, January 6th, many upperclassmen graciously visited freshmen homerooms during activity period to offer helpful advice and explanations on preparing for midterms. Upon entering freshmen homerooms, upperclassmen passed out a stress survey, so that Nashoba can better understand the stress of its students, and students can better understand it themselves. Also, upperclassmen ran through a mock midterm schedule, watched a video on test anxiety and stress, and set up a two week preparation plan that freshmen could take a picture of.

This opportunity to ask questions and hear successful studying methods and opinions from students who have already taken the midterms several times is significant. Staff at Nashoba are also hoping that high stress levels will be lowered in their classrooms, and that students are taking the appropriate steps in preparing for midterms.

The schedule for exams is different this year, and midterms week is one week later than usual. Instead of two exams on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and one exam on Friday, this year we will only be having one exam on Tuesday. There will be three review periods, with only an A Period exam.

This year, stress levels in Nashoba will hopefully be lower than any other year, as we make a major effort to assist students in preparation and time management in the last few weeks before exams. Good luck to everyone on their exams!