Exams, your social life and the pandemic

C/O Jeswin Thomas

First-years at McMaster share the academic and social impacts of “missing out” on high school

By: Zara Khan, Contributor

Exams. That’s quite the scary word when it comes to first-year students who went through online school and “quadmesters.” Although this might not apply to every first-year student, the education of more than 1.5 billion students were affected by school closures worldwide. The majority of university freshmen entered after completing two grades online, where exams and standard testing were not mandated during this time period.

So now, when freshmen are faced with double the amount of courses in addition to exams they feel at a loss as to how to study and prepare for their assessments. We all knew that post-secondary education was not supposed to be easy but because of the pandemic, university has become increasingly difficult for some students to handle. 

In Ontario high schools, having a course that was supposed to be learnt over four months was cut in half, but had students attending each course for double the amount of time in one sitting. This not only made students lose interest in the subject, but also left students not retaining much information either. A study conducted by Per Engzell reveals that this style of learning throughout the pandemic is equivalent to a learning loss of one-fifth of a school year. This left many seniors going into post-secondary education without retaining much from their last high school year. 

“Online schooling caused me to learn everything faster, that way I was learning to pass and not just for the sake of learning, which is really important to be successful in university,” explained Sandra Eldho, a first-year life sciences student. 

The idea of learning in order to get through the school year and not necessarily to understand the concepts being taught impacted first years greatly this year. They now have to study, understand more difficult concepts and handle double the course load with a flawed strategy to study effectively. 

Exams are also a major source of stress for many students.

“I’m nervous because all of [the exams] are close to [worth] 50%,” explained Kirsten Espe, a first-year integrated biomedical engineering and health sciences student.  

With COVID-19 leading to the cancellation of in-person exams in most high schools last year, new university students are struggling with being thrown into exams worth almost half of their entire grade. 

“We don’t feel well prepared and don’t want to [write] it,” said Leanne Chen, a first-year integrated biomedical engineering and health sciences student. 

Similar sentiments were echoed by Hima Patel, a student in engineering. 

“I believe from my high school experience, I don’t feel as prepared as other kids may feel. I grew up in a small town and our political standings, which were conservative for 20 years, had a lot of impact on what we learned. One of the big things is that we never learned how to be responsible in settings which include partying, intimacy and drinking” said Patel.

With such a focus on the academic aspect of university, we often forget about how social university can be too. Some students from smaller towns, such as Patel, were already underprepared to handle the new social settings that come with university. With the pandemic, we can only imagine how isolation may have contributed to a decline in the social skills that come with high school. With all this said, the loss of first years’ last two years of high school negatively impacted the majority of first-years within both their academic and social environments. 

I would imagine that regardless of your high school background, all students were startled (at least slightly) by the pandemic and this impacted their academic and/or social skills in some way or another. As mentioned by numerous first-years at Mac, the pandemic and the loss of a traditional end to high school has set up the steep learning curve they must face now. 

When it comes to pre-exam stress, we must accept that our study techniques from high school are destined to evolve. Planning ahead, giving yourself more time to practice the material and fully understanding the concepts will help in lessening academic stress. Taking time for yourself periodically is also critical to the mind and we must explore methods to prevent burnout. In the end, whether high school prepared us well or not for post-secondary, we can always try and put our best foot forward when it comes to preparing for our future.