There are only two full days left in the semester, and as the panic for procrastinators sets in, some are about to be thrown a curve ball: the pre-finals test. Teachers who give students such exams the week before finals need to realize the negative impact of their actions.

The relationship between students and faculty on our campus is a unique one. As undergraduates, we hang out with our professors at their homes, go out to eat with them after church and strengthen a bond that students at many other universities never know exists. But the rose-colored lenses of the relationship are removed the week before finals.

Maybe some teachers do this, not out of shear spite, but from a lack of understanding and remembering their own humble pasts as a student. Professors should know that you have a lot to do. They know that many of you need to begin to clean up your junky rooms so you can be checked out of your dorms, that some are trying to work extra shifts because you’ll go broke when your minimum wage job ceases to exist over the break, and that you’re studying for at least nine other hours of classes.

A common misconception among the professors who give exams the week before finals is that these tests will benefit the students. It’s true that an exam over a final unit can be good preparation for the types of questions that will be covered in a comprehensive final. But the reality is students will most likely do just as badly on the exam this week as they will the next. The extra exam the week before only takes away from time that could be spent studying elsewhere.

Other professors don’t mean to be this cruel. Instead, they plan to have the exam two or maybe even three weeks before finals. Unfortunately, things got thrown off from the dates specified by the syllabus due getting stuck on a section. But the syllabus was there for a reason. At the beginning of the semester, these professors didn’t want to give an exam before finals; what changed? It doesn’t hurt less because you didn’t mean to do it.

Students love and appreciate our professors’ commitment to our education and to us on an even more personal basis. Maybe some of these professors just didn’t know exactly what they were doing by giving an exam before finals – but as we’re accustomed to hearing, “no more excuses.”