For many LS students, January is a month riddled with dread. Students are whipped up into the frenzy of stress and studying that comes with mid-year exams. But the students here at LS are not alone. Most high schoolers all throughout the state are going through the same experience. Here at LS, exams are broken up into four days by subject, each with three, two-hour long sessions. This year those exams took place on the 16th, 18th, 21st, and 22nd of January. At other local high-schools they do midterms quite differently. 

At Concord-Carlisle High School, they had their exams from the 14th to 17th of January. Each day was split up into two exam blocks that are one hour and forty minutes with extra testing time after each and a lunch block in between. The first lasts from 8:00 a.m. to 9:40 a.m. The second testing block is from 11:35 a.m. to 1:15 p.m.

Even more different from LS’s midterm is Maynard High School’s which had four days of testing on the 21st to the 24th of January. On the 21st there were four exam testing blocks, the day starting at 7:45 a.m. and ending at 2:05 p.m. For the rest of the days there were only three testing blocks starting again at 7:45 a.m. but instead ending at 10:55 a.m. The biggest difference between Maynard and LS is the duration of testing blocks. Maynard has 57 minutes for each exam while LS has more than double that – two full hours. 

When asked what their preference was, a sophomore said she much preferred how LS does midterms because the exams are structured well and spaced out adequately. Additionally she felt that “57 minutes is not comparable to the amount of hard work and studying [students] put into the exam.”