Winter quarter has arrived at Seattle University, and with week six already nearly past, many students have just come out on the other side of midterm season. Be it tests, essays, group projects or presentations, many students have spent the past few weeks cramming in the hours to protect a large percentage of their overall course grades. 

Bella Villareal-Elizondo, a second-year biology major, recently completed two midterms, one for organic chemistry and bioinformatics. 

“It was really awful to study for, the midterm itself was fine,” Villareal-Elizondo said, referring to bioinformatics. “The O-Chem exam was how you would expect an O-Chem exam to be, that one was awful. I hate midterms, quote me on that.” 

Villareal-Elizondo shared that she spent around four to five hours a day studying for her midterms for a week leading up to the test, adding up to around 35 total preparation hours. 

She also shared that the quarter system compounds the stress and frequency of midterms. 

“I feel like a thing with the quarter system is that we’re constantly in midterms, which I think is a really big difference from the semester system. I feel like I don’t ever get a break,” Villareal-Elizondo said. “I feel like everything revolves around midterms and exams with the quarter system. Everything matters so much more so I feel like it’s more stressful.” 

Aurora Dunn, a first-year environmental studies major, agreed that the fast pace of the quarter system makes midterms especially difficult. She had a timed in-class essay as well as a traditional test and an essay due for her midterms.

“Because everything’s in such a short stretch of time especially for winter quarter since we don’t have as many breaks, it kind of just feels like you don’t have any relaxed time with school,” Dunn said. “You get into it, you’re immediately preparing for midterms, you do your midterms, and then you’re immediately preparing for finals. That’s what the experience has been like for me so far.” 

Aicha Toure, a second-year psychology and English double major, had large essay assignments as opposed to tests. She only had one midterm for Encountering American Literature, which involved writing multiple literary analyses as well as a comparative analysis between two texts read so far in the quarter.

“I got like a 96, so that was pretty good, but it was so much work,” Toure said. 

Toure’s biggest difficulty was balancing work on midterms with numerous extracurriculars, including editing for the Seattle University Undergraduate Research Journal and participating in Ethics Bowl. For students active in clubs or other extracurricular activities, the added workload of midterms can be especially difficult. 

“Literally my whole weekend I was just writing papers,” Toure said. “I probably spent minimum 10 hours on this in total.” 

Toure explained that she actually prefers midterm tests as opposed to essays or other projects which are more common in humanities classes. 

“If I’m gonna get a midterm, please make it a test. I’ll study, I’ll take it, and it’s over, as opposed to writing an essay there’s just so much more stress going into it because it’s more like you’re producing something instead of just remembering things,” Toure explained. 

She also questioned the necessity of midterms in certain humanities classes. 

“Midterms can feel a little bit pointless unless it comes into the natural flow of the class. When I’m taking a biopsych class it makes sense for us to have a midterm because it’s the end of that portion of what we’re learning and he’s making sure we’ve got it because we can’t do the later stuff unless we understand this. Whereas with an American Lit class, we’re reading things all quarter, and we’re already doing short papers throughout the quarter so she knows where we’re at, so a midterm just feels unnecessary,” Toure said. 

Dunn finds anxiety in the midterm season. As the brutal mid-quarter exams bear down on students, changes interfere with routines, mental health and students’ social lives. When a large percentage of one’s grade stems from a week of work amid a bevy of other commitments, it can be challenging to ground oneself as a student. Professors do not seem to be considering an end to middle of the term assessments, assignments or exams any time soon, so this intermediate burden will persist for the time being.