The everyday life of an Upper School student is filled with stress. Despite Parker’s forgiving academic schedule, a rigorous regimen of extracurriculars and homework leave most at 330 W. Webster with a shortage of free time or sleep, sometimes even both. So the opportunity to take a break, to have time away from school, is refreshing, even cathartic for some. The breaks we receive at Thanksgiving, Christmas, February, and April are almost holy for Parker’s older students, providing much needed leisure time without academic responsibilities––or so a student might hope.

But, there’s Finals, the cumulative cesspool of stress found in all academic classes, administered once each semester over three-day periods. Packed to the brim with stress, late nights, and high stakes, the Upper School’s endeavors into extreme academia are incredibly demanding. The weeks leading up to Finals are my least favorite time of the year, entailing loads of mind-numbing studying.

Given the status of breaks as stress-free times during which students can take a load off and relax, I would argue it would stand to reason that one might want to separate these two, keeping Finals off the minds of students over break so that they might enjoy their time off. Relieved of having to worry about the looming difficulties and scholastic commitments that play a heavy role in their daily lives, students would emerge healthier.

Finals should be nestled into a nugget of school when students have education on their mind and are in the regular groove of their classes. Given the difficulty and brevity of Finals, the event should be scheduled as considerately as possible to allow for students to eliminate any external factors that might distract them from their current academic endeavors. Right?

Right––but they aren’t. Finals need to be moved.

The way Parker does things is a bit wrong. Instead of conducting finals before Winter Break or pushing them back a week or two into very late January/early February to allow for a smooth transition back, this year, students will be afforded just nine days of classes between the end of Winter Break and First Semester Finals. Parker gives Upper Schoolers little time to prepare for the anxiety-ridden three day period.

Beyond adding stress to students’ breaks, the prospect of Finals coming almost immediately after Winter Break removes an important balance from students’ lives. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to disconnect from work or to strike a balance between work and relaxation, especially for students who are constantly assigned tasks to complete on their own time. Break is an important period during which individuals can regain their balance, taking time to kick back and enjoy life.

After digging around I found that every school in the ISL, other than Elgin Academy, for which I could find no information, hosts finals before winter break. That’s Latin, Lab, Morgan Park Academy, Northridge Prep, Woodlands Academy, and Willows Academy. North Shore Country Day School doesn’t even have mid-year finals, believing them to be disruptive.

Various public schools––Whitney Young, Jones College Prep, and Walter Payton––conduct their finals after Winter Break, but they give their students fifteen days of lead-time to our nine. That’s 67% more time to reacclimate and study.

Speaking from experience, I can confidently say that nine days is far too few to fully return to the work and stress found in the Upper School. It forces students to work over Winter Break. While it’s enough time to really get buried in studying and do large-scale prep work, it’s not long enough to prevent many students (myself included) from feeling an obligation to study over the holiday. Even for those who choose to ignore their studies and focus on freetime, the thought of finals remains in back of the brain, hanging over what should be two relaxing weeks.

The solution is simple: change the dates of Finals. Move it later, as several of Chicago’s premier public schools do, or place it before Winter Break in a fashion similar to our colleagues in the Independent School League. Finals doesn’t greatly impact the Lower, Intermediate, and Middle Schools. It isn’t contingent upon any outside cooperation. It’s not even a centralized event that would necessitate large scale organizational changes so why shouldn’t the school help to ease the stress of Upper School life by altering our schedule to maximize its benefit for students?

My proposed solution is not without downsides. It would elongate second semester and shorten first semester, only furthering our uneven semester lengths. It would force teachers to accommodate Finals and consider them when working on events such as Vespers or the 12 Days Morning Ex. It would change how we embraced the winter season at Parker. But consider the upsides: allowing students and teachers to spend their breaks relaxing and not fretting about upcoming finals, incentivizing families to stay in town towards the end of the year and not have their children miss school, allowing for the entire community (specifically the Upper School) to return in January fully ready to take on the second half of a long school year.

Moving Finals would also open up an ideal time for the Upper School to participate in a January “semester,” suspending academic classes for a week or two in favor of deep-dive electives or trips, working as a sort of extended Cookies. While finding information on that sort of period is much harder to come by, I know that there have been talks of implementing such a program and that plenty of other progressive schools embrace a similar system.

Through a simple schedule change, our school could free a plurality of Upper School students from undue stress during their longest mid-year break, allowing Parker’s oldest students to enjoy a rare vacation from their busy and high-intensity everyday lives. The change isn’t some pipe dream. It’s entirely possible if the right individuals are convinced. And it’s important to preserve the sanctity of relaxing and disconnecting, especially in our increasingly competitive and connected world.